California State University, Northridge Underneath

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

UNDERNEATH HER SKIRT:

STAGING SAMUEL BECKETT’S HAPPY DAYS AS AN EMBODIMENT OF BETTY

FRIEDAN’S THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE

A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Masters of Arts in Theatre

Cheryl Lynn Wanless

May 2014

The graduate project of Cheryl Lynn Wanless is approved:

______

Ah-Jeong Kim, Ph.D. Date

______

Leigh Kennicott, Ph.D. Date

______

J’aime Morrison-Petriono, Ph.D., Chair Date

California State University, Northridge

Acknowledgements

This graduate project would not be possible without God and St. Monica Catholic

Church. Thank you to my family for pushing me to continue. I would like to thank Dr.

Peter Larlham at San Diego State University for introducing me to the great plays of

Samuel Beckett. Dr. Morrison, thank you for sharing your extensive knowledge of

Beckett, as working with you has been both challenging and rewarding. I am very fortunate to have learned so much about Irish Theater from you. Someday I hope to visit

Synge’s chair. Beckett is definitely worth the work. Dr. Kennicott and Dr. Kim, thank you for being on my committee. I am indebted to set designer Tony Cisek for emailing me back with such kind and inspirational words about the characters of Winnie and

Willie. I feel your inspiration for your rendition of Beckett’s mound tied this whole project together with a final ribbon and reminded me why I started in the first place.

Artists think alike in different corners of the world. To my little sister, Debbie, thanks for your input!

I would also like to thank Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA where I spent many tiring weekends and weeknights working on my research when I wasn’t working full-time. Nothing worth having comes easy. Thank you to my supportive and encouraging friends and colleagues, especially Erin, Janee, Darcy, Gloria, Stephanie,

Tova, Seanan, Allison, Kristin, Charrisa, both Nicole’s, and Alex. Thank you all for listening to me and inspiring each in your own special way throughout the challenging

iii process of my developing my graduate project and working towards my masters degree while working full-time and lacking an exciting social life!!! Finally, thank you to both

Betty Friedan and Samuel Beckett for the everlasting impression they have had on the world and my life. Cheers to Winnie, for going down singing while fighting the never- ending battle that all women fight.

Dedication

This graduate project is dedicated to my family: Mom, Dad, Ali, Deb, Kevin, Karin, and

Aunt Patty. Thank you for your continued love and endless support throughout this project and all the projects I have pursued over the years. Mom and Dad, thank you especially for teaching me the value of education and introducing me to great literature.

Table of Contents

Signature Page ii

Acknowledgments iii

Dedication v

List of Illustrations vii

Abstract xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 16

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Chapter 2 45

A Closer Look at the Mound in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Chapter 3 62

My Rendition of the Mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Conclusion 73

Bibliography 88

Appendix A: Advertisements 95

Appendix B: Photographs of Various Renditions of the Mound 111

Appendix C: My Rendition of the Mound: Visual Inspiration, Sketch, Model 118

List of Illustrations

Illustration Page

1: In Sink Erator garbage disposal advertisement, 1959 95

2: Frigidaire Built-In advertisement, 1957 96

3: Frigidaire Built-In advertisement, 1957 97

4: Frigidaire Built-In advertisement, 1959 98

5: Tide Soap Detergent Advertisement, 1953 99

6: Lewyt Power Cleaner Vacuum Cleaner Advertisement, 1956 100

7. MaxFactor Pan-Cake Make-up Advertisement, 1959 101

8. Sanitone Dry Cleaning Advertisement, 1959 102

9: Cocktail party hosting idea advertisement, 1958 103

10: Cocktail party hosting idea advertisement, 1958 104

11: Bernhard Altman Clothing Advertisement, 1960 105

12: Regina Electrik Broom Vacuum Advertisement, 1959 106

13: Advertisement from Giorgio Armani Cosmetic Campaign, 2011 107

14: Botox Advertisement, 2014 108

15: Ronay purse advertisement, 1959 109

16: Bufferin advertisement, 1959 110

vii

17: Director Jose Carrasquillo’s 2011 version of Happy Days, 111

in Arlington,Virginia

18: Director Jose Carrasquillo’s 2011 version of Happy Days, 111

in Arlington,Virginia

19: Director Nicholas Monu’s 2013 rendition of the mound in 112

Glückliche Tage at Theater Krefeld in Germany, designed by Udo Hesse

20: Director Nicholas Monu’s 2013 rendition of the mound in 112

Glückliche Tage at Theater Krefeld in Germany, designed by Udo Hesse

21: Photo of Mabou Mines’ 1998 version of the mound 113

from Beckett’s Happy Days at the Community Center in New York City,

directed by Robert Woodruff and designed by Doug Stein

22: Photo of Mabou Mines’ 1998 version of mound 113

from Beckett’s Happy Days at TORONADA, directed by Robert Woodruff,

23: Director André Brassard’s 2008 violet, post-apocalyptic 114

viii

version of the mound from Happy Days or Les Beaux Jours in Quebec

24: Director André Brassard’s 2008 violet version of the mound 114

from Happy Days or Les Beaux Jours in Quebec

25: Photo of director Andrea Mata’s 2010 version of Samuel Beckett’s mound 115

in Días Felices with the Pluie Group at the Cultural Center of Spain

26: Photo of director Andrea Mata’s version of Samuel Beckett’s mound 115

in Días Felices with the Pluie Group at the Cultural Center of Spain

27: Mark Lamos’ 2010 version of Happy Days 116

at Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut,

28: Mark Lamos’ 2010 version of Happy Days 116

at Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut,

29: Robert Wilson’s 2008 version of the mound from Beckett’s Happy Days 117

at the Spoleto Festival in Italy

30: Robert Wilson’s 2008 version of the mound from Beckett’s Happy Days 117

at the Spoleto Festival in Italy

31: Photo of new Entrepreneur Barbie Doll, launched by Mattel, 2014 118

32: A sketch of my version of the mound from 119

Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

33: A photograph of my version of the mound from 120

Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

34: A photograph of my version of the mound from 121

Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

35: A photograph of the vintage Barbie doll used to represent Winnie 122

in my version of the mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

36: Photograph showing a closer look at the various miniature items used in my 123

version of the mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

ABSTRACT

UNDERNEATH HER SKIRT:

STAGING SAMUEL BECKETT’S HAPPY DAYS AS AN EMBODIMENT OF BETTY

FRIEDAN’S THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE

Cheryl Lynn Wanless

Master of Arts in Theatre

This graduate project explores the struggle of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s 1960 play

Happy Days through the lens of Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. Both works feature women, housewives in particular, who are physically and metaphorically trapped. By studying contemporary literature by feminist authors, including Debora L.

Spar, Sheryl Sandberg, and Naomi Wolf, I explore how the societal pressures faced by

Winnie and the women presented by Betty Friedan continue to entrap and inhibit both working women and housewives today. As the advertisements of the 1950s and 1960s

xi glorified the domesticated housewife role, contemporary works will be explored in this project as well, such as director Jennifer Siebel-Newsom’s 2011 documentary Miss-

Representation, which shows how heavily the media continues to influence women with sexist images. By leading women to micromanage themselves, obsess over household issues such as cleaning and fixating on their looks, oppressive media images steer women away from pursuing independent careers, positions of power, and hobbies which are imperative for self-fulfillment. Winnie remains encased within the confines of the feminine mystique as it takes on the form of a mound. While the women Friedan discusses and interviews speak of an identity crisis and a feeling of nonexistence, Winnie actually embodies it. I will create my own version of the mound from Happy Days by using articles Friedan references within her book, fashion images, household appliances, cleaning supplies, style, and advertisements of the late 1950s and early 1960s eras. I will research seven versions of the mound for reference.

xii

Introduction

A strong theme of female entrapment ties together both the play Happy Days by

Samuel Beckett (1960) and the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty

Friedan (1963). Both works feature women, housewives in particular, who are physically and metaphorically trapped. Betty Friedan was a trailblazer for women. Her legacy lives on today. Although she wrote many articles and books which addressed the inequalities and oppression faced by women in the 1950s and 1960s, one remains the most impactful:

The Feminine Mystique. This work led to her fighting for equal rights for women as well as her developing many organizations for women’s equality. The references and articles addressed in this book are still relevant today, as current writers such as Sheryl Sandberg and Naomi Wolf explore the restrictions and pressures women face while trying to pursue careers and personal endeavors amidst societal and media pressures to fulfill stereotypical female roles.

Friedan firmly stated, “The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of

American women alive” (Friedan 336). This statement remains a relevant current topic in that the success of the feminine mystique lies in its endurance and ability to reinvent itself in every era, using various media to oppress women. Modern documentaries such as director Jennifer Siebel-Newsom’s 2011 documentary Miss-Representation display how the media and advertisements in particular remain key in burning sexist images into the minds of both men and women, creating unrealistic standards of who women should be and how they should look. These images, glorifying an unhealthily thin physique and flawless standards of beauty, closely resemble the glorified post World War II housewife

1 images discussed by Friedan. They sell an image of perfection a woman will distract herself with throughout her lifetime in order to emulate.

The common goal of these advertisements, articles, and images was to preserve the traditional stay-at-home housewife, discouraging her from outside pursuits. Beckett’s leading character in Happy Days, Winnie, is physically encased in a mound, representing the preservation of this traditional housewife. As she faces the end of her life, Winnie faces a crippling unsettledness and a lack of genuine familiarity with herself. This unfulfilled feeling was felt by the housewives Friedan interviewed, as Friedan coined the condition, “the problem that has no name” (Friedan 11). This condition began to affect the lives of thousands of women like Winnie, as they realized they had sacrificed individual careers, artistic hobbies, and educational pursuits in order to attain the popular standard of femininity. The popular standard of femininity discouraged the “single life” and career goals, and glorified the role of devoted housewife and mother. Women began to fear life beyond the bounds of the home, as it was uncommon and discouraged to vocalize dissatisfaction with their current lives. Only by sharing the issues in her book did Friedan begin to speak out more freely and seek out more opportunities for women.

The women discussed by Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg in her 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, feminist writer Naomi

Wolf’s 1990 book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, and actress and director Siebel-Newsom’s 2011 documentary Miss-Representation all share the same hesitations and insecurities that the housewives in Friedan’s book share.

While the women work in different fields they still feel the same pressure of the feminine mystique as it takes on the form of chauvinism in the workforce, stress on body image,

2 and harsh criticism on the physical appearance of women in positions of power. Women are faced with the pressure of making a choice between career and home life, and are faced with guilt for choosing one over another. Women who are too powerful are more harshly judged than men, leading many women to steer away from pursuing certain careers, as Sandberg states:

For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful

professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is

that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are

surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to

both their families and careers. (23)

Friedan’s thoughts tie into the sex-directed education and sexist advertisements Friedan discusses which lead women to think that pursuing certain careers or higher education would be too difficult when they are to become a housewife and mother.

Issues of sexism and the housewife’s lack of self-fulfillment are prevalent today.

While the media and many journals fed women the same oppressive propaganda, Friedan was forced to write her own works in order to create an outlet for her groundbreaking thoughts. This outlet served as a means to share the thoughts and innermost feelings of many women struggling with the same feelings of entrapment and emptiness in the domestic setting. The book discusses personal stories of women who struggle with the sacrifices they have made to get married and have children. These stories are from some women Friedan actually knew and encountered at her own high school reunion. Many of these women married very young and left college or turned down career opportunities to

3 focus solely on marrying and developing families. Women were encouraged to pursue the idealized housewife role, as Friedan paints the picture:

The suburban housewife- she was the dream image of the young American women

and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife-

freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of

childbirth and the illness of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated,

concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had true feminine

fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner

to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances,

supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of. (13)

This prototype of the ideal housewife was something the majority of women strived to emulate at the time of Friedan’s book, as revered by magazines and advertisements.

Friedan notes:

In the new America, fact is more important than fiction. The documentary Life

and Look images of real women who devote their lives to children and home are

played back as the ideal, the way women should be: this is powerful stuff, not to

be shrugged off like the heroines of women’s magazine fiction. When a mystique

is so strong, it makes its own fiction a fact. It feeds on the very facts which might

contradict it, and seeps into every corner of the culture, bemusing even the social

critics. (53)

The pursuit of feminine fulfillment, however, proved to be fleeting and unsatisfactory in the long-run, and women failed to fulfill their individual skills and goals. Beckett’s

4 leading character of Winnie in Happy Days physically presents this dissatisfaction, as her idealized and domesticated bubble has rotted away. Winnie lacks a solid, individual existence and represents the breakdown and “jumping-off point” Friedan discusses

(Friedan 8). She clings to material items, redundant behavior, and constant talking to distract herself from the fear of exploring and facing her individualism.

The feminine mystique has reinvented itself from generation to generation in order to create an unattainable prototype of what the ideal woman should be. From the perfect suburban housewife holding the laundry detergent in a 1959 Tide advertisement (Figure

5), to today’s skinny, attractive career woman with the Harvard MBA, the feminine mystique has successfully used the conduits of sexist education, calculated advertising, and the mass media to bombard women with overwhelming ideas of what they aim to be.

Sex-directed education discouraged women from career pursuits, as Friedan revealed:

Home economists suggested more realistic preparation for housewives, such as high

school workshops in home appliances. College educators suggested more discussion

groups on home management and the family, to prepare women for the adjustment to

domestic life. (18)

These types of sex-directed education create the environment which still exists today and is discussed by director Jennifer Siebel-Newsom in her 2011 documentary Miss-

Representation. Siebel-Newsom’s core slogan in the documentary, “You can’t be what you can’t see,” suggests that lack of women in strong leadership positions as portrayed in the media and in education lead to the lack of women climbing the ladder to positions of power (Miss-Representation).

This societal pressure placed strong value on physical appearance and less value on intellect, leading women to constantly feel dissatisfied with themselves, their appearances, and their domestic settings. As seen in advertisements for cleaning supplies such as the Lewyt Power Cleaner Vacuum (Figure 6), as well as in appliance advertisements such as the Frigidaire Built-In (Figure 4), women would continuously consume to fill the void and find validity in the housewife role. As with the women

Friedan interviews, the housework is never done and they continue cleaning. The advertisements and images of women cleaning juxtapose Winnie, who is ironically stuck in an endless mound of dirt from which she never escapes. Enough cleaning can never be done to fill the void, as the mound continues to overtake her. When consumerist items such as toothpaste and medicine such as Winnies’ run out and the validation from the husband depletes, the woman faces the scariest journey of all: the journey to find herself and hear her own voice. As stressed by Friedan, facing oneself and honing one’s individual skills and abilities is the only way to reach true self-fulfillment and inner- peace. Winnie has clearly failed to do so up to this point and her fears now come to the surface as the world draws in more closely on her as an individual.

Friedan also laced interviews and candid discussions with sexist articles from popular magazines and women’s journals which pushed to steer women’s interests away from politics as well as the workforce in order to drive them right back into domestic settings. In Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days, Winnie, an aged and worn housewife, performs repetitive actions, day in and day out. Winnie remains buried in a mound under a relentless sun and tries to comfort herself by rambling. By the second act, she is buried up to her neck in the mound. Her husband, Willie, is able to move about at the side of the

6 mound. He ignores her and reads the newspaper. Winnie depends on certain household and material items for comfort, such as a purse, a parasol, a toothbrush, among other things. Her worn clothing and items in many ways symbolize her worn spirit. She searches for some form of existence and self-worth throughout the play. This is prevalent as she constantly checks her physical appearance in her mirror and remains dissatisfied with her aging appearance, as she says, “-ah yes-(inspects teeth in mirror)- Poor dear

Willie- (testing upper front teeth with thumb, indistinctly)- good Lord!- (pulling back corner of mouth, mouth open, do). –ah-well (other corner, do.) –no worse” (Beckett 9).

She also needs constant reassurance from her husband, most poignant and desperate when she asks Willie, “Was I lovable once, Willie (Pause.) Was I ever lovable (Pause.)

Do not misunderstand my question, I am not asking if you loved me, we know all about that, I am asking if you found me lovable- at one stage. (Pause.) No (Pause.) You can’t

(Pause.)” (Beckett 31). This pleading and emotional questioning reveals a level of insecurity on Winnie’s part, as if she is unsure of her own marriage which has validated her and her identity up to a point. Now the “wilderness” she refers to at multiple moments in the play consists in her facing the world and herself alone, which is frightening and foreign to her.

Winnie suffers from the identity crisis similar to those Friedan addresses in her book.

In fact, the opening sentence of The Feminine Mystique may describe Winnie’s predicament “The problem lay buried” and “she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-“Is this all?” (Friedan 15). The problem Friedan writes about is the unfulfilled housewife. Winnie is also “the problem” who is buried in Beckett’s play.

Winnie asks the question of “is is this all?” at the pivotal moment in Happy Days when

7 she is holding the parasol before it bursts into flames. She reveals to Willie, “And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out. (Pause.) Don’t you ever have that feeling, Willie, of being sucked up? (Pause.) Don’t you have to cling on sometimes, Willie?” (Beckett 33-34).

Willie can not relate, as he responds in confusion, underscoring the strife Winnie describes being related to the strife of the housewife, as Winnie continues “Ah well, natural laws, natural laws, I suppose it’s like everything else, it all depends on the creature you happen to be” (Beckett 34). Winnie feels stuck at this moment in the play, unable to release the parasol, and yearns for an escape from the restrictive monotony of her life, as she is unable to move about as Willie is. As Winnie finds herself unable to release the parasol, she represents the women who feel crippled living under the guidelines of the feminine mystique. They feel powerless and afraid to try and break free, as their existences had depended on their relationships with the homes and their husbands.

Beckett’s heroine embodies the very crisis which Friedan discusses: a housewife searching for purpose and her own identity, day after day. By watching the redundancy of

Winnie’s daily life which has clearly worn on her, we are left to ask the same question which Friedan asks in The Feminine Mystique: “How can any woman see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life?” (Friedan 31). These bounds include the restrictive and monotonous patterns in which Friedan discusses, including focusing on the needs of the husband in the marriage, raising children, cooking, cleaning, and staying within the confines of the home. As audiences and readers, we are left to question how Winnie can find meaning and fulfillment within her current state, a state where even her husband

8 does not listen, as she talks to only herself and in many ways waits for her death under a tireless, beating sun.

Beckett uses many aesthetic elements and specific theatrical tactics in Happy Days to isolate Winnie, in turn giving her a voice, drawing the audience immediately to her story.

As Winnie says, “Ah yes, so little to say, so little to do, and the fear so great, certain days, of finding oneself…left with hours still to run, before the bell for sleep, and nothing more to say, nothing more to do, that days go by, certain days go by, quite by, the bell goes, and little or nothing said, little or nothing done” (Beckett 35). Winnie fills her days with the same routines for comfort, but they leave her empty. Winnie’s same routines she performs for comfort which leave her empty connect with Friedan’s portrait of housewives in terms of redundant, domesticated rituals. These rituals, including cooking, cleaning, taking the children to and from school, and catering to the husband, leaving many women admitting to Friedan that they are secretly miserable and unfulfilled.

Many of the women Friedan describe and interview are also self-medicating or suppressing their problems by focusing their energies and attention toward the children, husband, cooking, or cleaning. Winnie’s denial appears when she states, “Another heavenly day” (Beckett 1). The “busy work” distracts the women from the deprivation of societal function, masking the dissatisfaction and lack of self-fulfillment. As with the constant sun beating down on Winnie, one housewife Friedan interviewed states, “I can take the real problems; it’s the endless boring days that make me desperate” (Friedan

313). Winnie yearns for reassurance that Willie is actually listening to her talking, as women interviewed in The Feminine Mystique struggled with the issue of, “I feel empty

9 somehow…incomplete. I feel as if I don’t exist” (Friedan 20). This quote is central to

Winnie’s feeling and exhibiting throughout Beckett’s play.

By using the text of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, I will view Winnie’s struggle in Happy Days as that of a physically and an emotionally entrapped housewife.

To further underscore this relationship, I will create my own version of the mound in

Happy Days. By using articles Friedan references within her book, as well as images of fashion, propaganda, and style of the late 1950s and 1960s era, I will create my own rendition of the mound which entraps Winnie. I will research seven versions of the mound from previous productions for reference. The articles and advertisements Friedan references in her book are crucial for my research as well. They give a sense of the propaganda which was distributed to women at the time, including sexist and often oppressive standards which were expected of them.

Beckett explores the tiring search for existence and meaning in life. Winnie is the perfect physical representation of this quest. She represents all women yearning to overcome the divide caused by the feminine mystique, a divide which coerces women to make limiting career and personal choices based on biological biases and gender roles.

Today’s writers such as Sheryl Sandberg, Naomi Wolf, and Jennifer Siebel-Newsom are able to strongly continue work similar to that of Friedan because they continue to face similar pressures in their own professional lives and endeavors and choose to share their viewpoints. Studying the character of Winnie through the lens of The Feminine Mystique showcases how limiting, constraining, and severe the effects of the mystique can be on a woman if she does not learn to properly deal with it and overcome it in her ever day life.

While they come from different backgrounds, Winnie and the women interviewed by

Friedan all have felt oppressed and dissatisfied under the restrictive guidelines of the feminine mystique. Winnie, the women of Friedan’s studies, and women of today all struggle to survive and find their own individual existence in a patriarchal society. This patriarchy is evident in many facts and thoughts shared in interviews in Siebel-Newsom’s

2011 documentary, revealing how under-represented women are positions of power as depicted by the media, a term known as symbolic annihilation. The documentary showcases that while actresses, singers, and models are revered for being “empowered” for depicting the same, fashionable status-quo of sexuality, other empowered women are under-represented who are empowered without basing their successes on their looks, including Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Avon CEO

Andrea Jung, and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns (Miss-Representation). While models and popular culture stars and icons of today such as singers Katie Perry and Beyonce

Knowles are glorified in the media and consider themselves strong women, both women have stated they do not describe themselves as feminist (“CNN: Leading Women”). This apprehension to associate or identify with the term feminism influences other women as well to dread the backlash of occupying too strong of a pro-female stance. These women reveal a sense of hesitancy toward feminism, rooted from a fear that veering too far from stereotypical feminine roles will incur criticism or diminish their mainstream popularity.

On another side of the spectrum, Actress Kirsten Dunst has recently been criticized for a blatant statement she made about wanting to comply to stereotypical gender roles in an upcoming May 2014 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, as Rebecca Reeves shares:

Dunst is surprisingly outspoken on the subject of gender: "I feel like the feminine has

been a little undervalued," she says. "We all have to get our own jobs and make our

own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking – it’s a

valuable thing my mum created. And sometimes, you need your knight in shining

armour. I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s

why relationships work. (Reeves)

In cases of being pro-homemaker or pro-feminist, women are criticized on either end of the scale, especially in positions of power, as Siebel-Newsom states in her documentary,

“The more woman gain power, the more backlash they receive” (Miss-Representation).

Patriarchy and subjugation live on, as woman still earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn. Siebel-Newsom also stresses additional statistics, including that while women make up 51% of the population, they only compromise 17% of Congress (Miss

Representation). The documentary features interviews with women in the news, motion picture industry, educational field, and political arena who note how important it is for women to have a say in societal decisions.

The extension of the mound as a part of Winnie’s body represents the overbearing and heavy weight of criticism placed on the female form. Winnie, scared of facing the void that is herself, tries to keep busy in order to avoid terrifying self-confrontation, but her items to prolong this realization are running out. By better understanding the character of Winnie, the better we can understand the women who struggle under the severe confines of the feminine mystique. While we are not fully sure how Winnie became buried by the mound, we can hypothesize with the stories of the women interviewed by Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. Friedan compares housewives living

12 within the confines of the mystique as “trapped in a squirrel cage” and this most certainly resembles Winnie (Friedan 23). As Winnie has such an attachment to the music box and singing her song throughout the play, perhaps she shares the story of the housewife

Friedan interviewed, who stated, “I’ve never done what I hoped in my youth-music-I’ve wasted my college education” (Friedan 36). She may have had a strong passion for music or a personal talent, which she sacrificed to marry Willie and devote herself to the home.

In Chapter 1 I will provide a textual analysis of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine

Mystique and Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. This chapter will discuss parallels between

Winnie and the women Friedan discusses who struggle under the confines of the feminine mystique. This chapter will prove that the mound is in many ways one of the mystique’s strong guises, used to overtake and conquer women physically and emotionally, as seen with Winnie. I will use the critical writings of Linda Ben-Zvi and

S.E. Gontarski to explore the mound and text of Beckett’s play. I will demonstrate how the mound is relative to the lives women by applying its physical representation to the today’s writings of Sheryl Sandberg, Naomi Wolf, Debora L. Spar, Jennifer Coontz, and

Kim Masters. I will also consult debates about housewives on a popular online forum for women of today: “DebateWise.Org: Where Great Minds Differ.”

In Chapter 2 I will study seven vastly different versions of the mound from Samuel

Beckett’s Happy Days. Despite the extreme differences of each interpretation from a variety of international and national directors, Friedan’s theories are visible in all of them. By using the chapters and theories of Friedan’s book as a visual guide, I will pull the concepts from each chapter and show how they are staged by each of these versions of the mound.

Chapter 3 will showcase my version of the mound which will include household elements under Winnie’s skirt which are weighing Winnie down, such as cleaning supplies, household appliances, toiletries, a scale to weigh herself, magazines, and makeup. I will display my version of the mound by creating a set model and by photographing it. I will incorporate the lyrics of a song originally written by Shel

Silverstein, “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” as a projector image behind the mound, which addresses the struggles and later the downfall of a housewife. The mounds explored in

Chapter 2 will be presented in order of the chapters of theories Friedan presents in her book. Winnie’s skirt will be a key element, as I intend to use that an extension of the mound which entraps her.

Friedan stated:

My answers may disturb the experts and women alike, for they imply social

change. But there would be no sense in my writing this book at all if I did not

believe that women can affect society, as well as be affected by it; that, in the end,

a woman, as with man, has the power to choose, and to make her own heaven or

hell. (10)

This quote encapsulates the fuel for Friedan’s research and book which launched a feminist movement. However uncomfortable it may be, she stresses the importance of how women not only need to address “the problem that has no name,” but also nurture their own individual identities separate from the housewife role in order to successfully handle the feminine mystique as it will always find new ways to hold women back. By seeing the problem in front of us in the form the mound and recognizing all of the forms

14 it can take on we can begin to understand the severity of the feminine mystique as well as the character of Winnie.

Chapter 1: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Samuel Beckett’s

Happy Days

In 1963 Betty Friedan, a feminist pioneer, developed her groundbreaking book The

Feminine Mystique. She founded the National Organization for Women in 1966. Her core aim with this publication and the founding of an organization for woman was to shed light on the issues facing the entrapped housewives of the post World War II. In 1957,

Friedan gathered her facts by interviewing approximately 200 women whom she graduated college with. Friedan had three children and worked for multiple magazines during this time. She focused tirelessly on her book which was originally intended to be a magazine article to share the struggles of the unsettled housewife. Unfortunately, no magazine would publish her study due to its cutting edge, feminist content. This pushback only motivated her more to create one of the most influential books of 20th

Century which launched Second Wave Feminism. Second Wave Feminism was the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s which pushed for political, education, reproductive, and sexual rights for women. One of the greatest accomplishments of this movement was the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

As Friedan had put aside her own continued educational fellowship opportunities, in order to marry and support her husband and further his career goals and eventually to have children, she began to feel stifled by society. Friedan relates first-hand to the tight restrictions of the feminine mystique when she notes:

The girl who quits high school or college to marry and have a baby, or to take a job to

work her husband’s way through, is stunted from the kind of mental growth and

understanding that higher education is supposed to give, as surely as child labor used

to stunt the physical growth of children. She is also prevented from realistic

preparation and planning for a career or commitment that will utilize her abilities and

will be of some importance to society and herself. (158)

As successfully described by Friedan, by failing to chase individual endeavors, the woman not only shortchanges society but most importantly limits herself. The central character of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days embodies the very crisis which Friedan discusses: a housewife searching for purpose and her own identity. As S.E.

Gontarski states in Happy Days: A Manuscript Study: “Winnie is one of Beckett’s creatures of habit, and habit, Beckett and Proust argue, blocks self-realization and deadens awareness” (Gontarski 12). Winnie finds herself physically, emotionally, and mentally trapped and unable to break free from terrifying situation.

Amidst the intense and ferocious grip of the feminine mystique, according to

Friedan, a woman suffers greatly in the long-run by becoming depressed, bored, angry, and unfulfilled. Friedan’s book spotlights numerous women, left restless and miserable while attempting to be perfect housewives of the 1950s and 1960s. Friedan interviews one woman who says:

My days are all busy, and dull, too. All I ever do is mess around. I get up at eight- I

make breakfast, so I do the dishes, have lunch, do some more dishes, and some

laundry and cleaning in the afternoon. Then it’s supper dishes and I get to sit down a

few minutes before the children have to be sent to bed…That’s all there is to my day.

It’s like any other wife’s day. Humdrum. (22)

A common thread of yearning for more in life weaves all of the women Friedan interviews together. The common bond of yearning for a multi-dimensional life makes the topic Friedan addresses in her book imperative and noteworthy, as it is shared by millions of women. Friedan notes, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that

I came to call the feminine mystique” (Friedan 7). Advertising companies, as Friedan pinpoints, capitalized on the intense needs of housewives to perpetually purchase appliances and cleaning products to validate the housewife role. Winnie, like the housewives in The Feminine Mystique, is unable to break free of this confinement no matter how much she arranges and rearranges the items from her bag. Despite repetition and daily routine, their tasks never get done and they never move beyond one stationary point. Friedan’s interviews revealed one housewife’s inner feelings:

I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do-hobbies, gardening, pickling,

canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA

teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about-

any feelings of who you are. (16)

These women have yet to face the frightening self-reflection Winnie faces. While pursuing all of the tasks women felt they were “supposed to do” under the regulations of the feminine mystique, they were, in turn, learning less and less about who they were as individuals, as Friedan states, “It was these women that first began to the notice the tell- tale signs of the problem that has no name; their voices were dull and flat, or nervous and jittery; they were listless and bored, or frantically “busy” around the house or community” (Friedan 23). As the feminine mystique exhausts the housewife with an

18 endless race to achieve domestic perfection, she puts off her own happiness and fails to address her inner emotions and needs. By creating the illusion for women that the only truly fulfilling and appropriate role in life consists of marriage, homemaking, and motherhood, both pride and interest in individual self-identity amongst women begin to crumble. Coincidentally, the nourishing of self-identity and catering to one’s individual needs, as Friedan stresses, is the only healthy way to avoid the complete domination of the feminine mystique. Friedan proposed “A New Life Plan for Women,” in Chapter 14 of her book, as a successful means of battling the feminine mystique. The women she interviewed who felt the most satisfied were the ones working or pursuing education, enriching hobbies, or careers which were completely separate from the domestic setting.

Friedan states:

Ironically, the only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities

fully, to achieve identity in society is a life plan that can encompass marriage and

motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique; the lifelong

commitment to an art or science, to politics or freedom. (336)

In order to fully succeed in oppression women, the “feminine mystique” needs various channels by which to forcefully communicate its messages to society. Friedan pinpoints that the media, especially in advertisements and magazines post World War II, began to popularize the glamorous housewife role to force women back to the household after the men returned to workplace. The advertising companies, dominated by men, glorified various kitchen appliances and cleaning supplies to make the unpaid household role appear more enticing and admirable (Figures 1-12).

Friedan’s goal as a writer was to publicize and describe this depressing epidemic as it negatively affected the lives of thousands of women. She believed that addressing the issue was the only hope society had for remedying it. The detrimental mental and physical effects women suffered from attempting to attain superficial images pressed by magazines and advertisements provide a fascinating arena of study. While Friedan’s extensive research and activism launched Second Wave Feminism with improved reproductive rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, women still have so far to go to overcome the vicious feminine mystique. Newer literature since the 1990s has launched a necessary Third Wave of feminism which now highlights the mystique’s new attempts to overpower women with unrealistic body image standards.

As addressed by Friedan, the feminine mystique takes on many forms and uses various channels to relay domineering messages to women. More recently, the feminine mystique oppresses women to other degrees, with images and advertisements to achieve a thinner physique and flawless physical appearance while striving to achieve professional, educational, and domesticated excellence. Sheryl Sandberg discusses the distracting pressures placed on a woman’s physical appearance before interviews and how women in power are judged much more harshly on their physical appearances. To better understand why the feminine mystique is an ongoing issue, challenging the lives of women in present times, current debates and literature amongst today’s housewives must be explored. By observing other literature from the women’s movement as well as debates on housewives today, proof is provided that Winnie is a housewife trapped by the feminine mystique.

Advertisements and magazine images still pressure women into unrealistic confines of what their ideal roles should be or how they should look, again leaving them suffering from Friedan’s concept of “the problem that has no name.” Friedan’s book has heavily influenced many feminist authors today. While some women feel staying at home full- time is best for their children, other women argue that working at a paying job outside of the home is the only way to feel fulfilled (“Debatewise.Org: Where Great Minds Differ”).

Some women feel working outside of the home is harmful and neglectful of the home, husband, and children. Current feminist writers debate over whether women nowadays are truly able to have a successful career and maintain a healthy family dynamic at the same time. Many women fail to reach powerful leadership positions as they feel they have to make a choice between work and the home. Debora L. Spar, Barnard College president and author of the 2013 book Wonder Woman: Sex, Power, and the Quest for

Perfection, notes in her 2013 article “Where Feminism Went Wrong,” that, unfortunately, under a third of her students she taught in 2005 at Harvard were women. In recent times,

Spar reveals the pressures the students shared with her about being told to dress sexy for interviews, as potential hiring companies were only focusing on their looks. She shares how many women at the university felt discouraged and overpowered by the dominating male presence in the university. Despite these women earning advanced Ivy League degrees, not much has changed since the era of Friedan’s interviews, as women aimed to be married and become housewives. As the women Friedan interviewed felt pressured to leave college or never even attended college in order to pursue marriage or motherhood,

Spar notes of the students she encountered:

Most of the women were frankly intending to work "for a year or two" and then move

into motherhood. These were some of the smartest and most determined young

women in the country. They had Ivy League degrees, for the most part, and were in

the midst of paying more than $100,000 for an M.B.A. And yet they were already

deeply concerned about how they would juggle their lives, and surprisingly

pessimistic about their chances of doing so. (1)

Recent debate amongst women reveals that once women enter the domestic setting full- time, they miss career advancement opportunities by leaving their careers temporarily or permanently to pursue motherhood. In Siebel-Newsom’s 2011 documentary, interviews bring up the point that the United States is one of the only industrialized nations without paid family leave (Miss-Representation). The feminine mystique again takes on a modern form as it pressures women to feel they must make a choice between being successful at a career or successful as a housewife and mother. This creates a stress and pressure which inhibits women and steers them away from certain careers or educational pursuits. As chief officer of Facebook and author of Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sheryl Sandberg states, “They [women] are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy” (Sandberg

23).With fear and apprehension they may fail, many women stick to the confines of the home and abandon individual pursuits on a work or educational level. This very discouragement contributed to the unsettlement and depression of the housewives Friedan encountered during her research.

Friedan proposed to break through the bounds of the mystique the women must have her own hobby, career, or education. Much contemporary debate regarding the choice

22 between working and staying at home exists today. Sandberg notes her book also,

“Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased satisfaction” (Sandberg 24). On

“DebateForum.org,” women argue whether or not it is truly beneficial to be full-time, stay-at-home-mothers. While some women feel working full-time is neglectful, other women argue that careers and enriching outside hobbies provide a necessary mental stimulus. Some women feel the time spent with children is more a matter of quality over quantity, and that the effects of being at home too much can cause adverse, suffocating effects for the children, such as dependency and irresponsibility (“DebateWise.org:

Where Great Minds Differ”). Friedan also notes the negative effect of the housewife vicariously living through her husband and children, as the housewife becomes so unsatisfied and bored with her monotonous, daily household tasks that she immerses herself in the lives of their husbands and children as a distraction. Evergreen State

College Professor and author of the 2005 book Marriage, A History Stephanie Coontz sides with Friedan in her 2013 New York Times Article, “The Triumph of the Working

Mother:”

Ms. Friedan wins on the question of whether working improves women’s well-being.

At all income levels, stay-at-home mothers report more sadness, anger, and episodes

of diagnosed depression than their employed counterparts. The feminine mystique

pressures women to uncomfortably force-fit themselves into certain stereotypical

molds, leaving little to no room for individual development. (1)

While Coontz discusses how working mothers were often pitied in the era of Friedan’s book, she notes various studies by sociologists in 2013 prove that working mothers are

23 physically and mentally healthier after having children. While the demands of the feminine mystique required women of the 1950s and 1960s to stay at home in order to have a successful marriage, Coontz goes on to note the complete opposite effects of women staying at home in current times as she states, “Back in the 1960’s and ’70s, a wife taking a job raised the risk of divorce. Today, however, a wife’s employment lowers the couple’s risk of divorce. Among middle-class Americans, dual-earner couples report the highest marital quality” (Coontz 1). While some women in debates argue staying at home is beneficial in order to remain attentive to the children and husband, Coontz notes studies of increased stress and unhappiness in women who stay at home because they are more uneasy about finances with only one parent working.

In sections of Friedan’s book, she interviews women who feel guilty leaving the home to work, as they feel it contributes to their children’s rebellious behaviors at school.

Friedan encourages more opportunities for working women. Coontz notes how other countries such as Norway and Britain cater more to working mothers, with more maternity leave and better childcare so that women do not feel so much pressure to choose between the home and workforce. To fully conquer the feminine mystique, the

United States needs to implement for options for women who are working with families.

While women who work today are satisfied and challenged, some feel backlash for pursuing their own careers and not staying home full-time like other housewives. Editor of The Hollywood Reporter and host of KCWR’s The Business Kim Masters, notes in a

2014 article on Parenting.com entitled “The Work/Stay-at-Home Debate,” “I know that even if the mortgage weren't a concern, I'd want to work, at least part-time, because it's interesting and stimulating and a part of my identity --and because it makes me, I

24 devoutly hope, a better mother” (Masters 1). Masters expressed her excitement to go back to work as a busy magazine editor after having her child, but reveals that she feels alienated by other mothers who do not work. As she expresses feelings of guilt for working, other women interviewed in her article feel guilty for leaving their careers after having children. Masters’ article showcases debates between women; some who feel superior to working women for staying home with their children, and others who feel putting your child in daycare all day is neglectful and selfish. Some women interviewed feel like they are not challenging themselves by not working while others feel left out of their children’s activities and lives because they are not around as much. Masters’ article reveals the needs for societal change which Friedan and Spar propose as well. More opportunities need to be available for working mothers and housewives so that the choice to work is not such a difficult path for women with families, as Masters adds, “Of course, some of the pressure could be lifted if there were more social supports for women who work, such as improved childcare programs and more flexible working hours -- as well as a higher standard of involvement for fathers” (Masters 6). In turn, women arguing with each other over staying at home or working will only oppress them more. Women need to collaborate and support one another in finding opportunities to break through the bounds of the modern-day feminine mystique. While women may have more opportunities than the ones interviewed by Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, many oppressive gender issues still exist now and need to be addressed. In her 2013 article “Can Women Have it

All?” Sarah Gibbard states:

This goes far beyond balancing work and job. We expect ourselves to look beautiful

in middle age and beyond, to excel as a parent and homemaker, to climb a career

ladder to the pinnacle of success and to do it all without breaking a sweat. When we

fall short of these ideals, we label ourselves failures. When we appear to succeed, we

pass along the myth of perfection to the next generation of women. (26)

In her 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Chief operating office of Facebook Sheryl Sanders reveres the suffragettes of the first feminist movement and reveals how fortunate women in the United Sates are to have the independence which many women in other countries do not have. However, she underscores examples of how the feminine mystique still exists in the workforce today, noting that only 17 countries in the world have female leaders. To bring more women into positions of power, she suggests some of the same solutions as Friedan, Spar, and Masters when she states, “Too few workplaces offer the flexibility and access to child care and parental leave that are necessary for pursuing a career while raising children” (Sandberg 8). This limitation is yet another restriction of the feminine mystique in modern times amongst today’s housewife. Siebel-Newsom’s documentary also notes the disappointing statistic that out of 67 countries with female presidents or prime ministers, the United States is not one of them. The documentary also highlights how when women do run for offices, such as

Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, they are judged much more harshly based on their appearance and gender roles. This judgment and criticism, heavily promoted and allowed by the media, discourages women from pursuing political positions (Miss-

Representation).

Wolf describes how the feminine mystique began to focus on women’s looks once it could no longer force them into the domestic setting, as she states, “Of the women’s culture of the 1950s, Friedan lamented that “there is no other way for a woman to be a

26 heroine” than to “keep on having babies,” today, a heroine must “keep on being beautiful” (Wolf 66-67). Contemporary women can relate to the housewives interviewed in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women with today’s contemporary pressures to be thin or beautiful in the media. By means of social control, the feminine mystique most recently pressures women to look perfect and this pressure becomes just as inhibiting as the pressure to be the ideal homemaker of the 1950s and

1960s. This force is present today, as millions of dollars are spent on current cosmetic campaigns such as the 2011 Giorgio Armani Cosmetics advertisement (Figure 13) and a recent, popular Botox advertisement (Figure 14). In reference to overbearing images of beauty in media images women exposed to in present times, Wolf declares:

The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet:

A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll’s house; a generation ago, women

turned their backs on the consumer of heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home;

but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary

ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us

psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once been

made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need

first; it is a new way to see. (19)

As women embody idealized standards of beauty they hold themselves back from higher achievement, again living within the confines of the feminine mystique. Wolf cleverly pinpoints that the advertising industry has merely replaced huge campaigns from

Friedan’s era which sold household products with cosmetic advertisements which now focus on a flawless appearance. Once again, by continuously consuming and purchasing

27 products in the attempt to achieve an ideal level of femininity, the feminine mystique thrives. Wolf notes that once advertisers lost the unfulfilled homemakers of the 1950s and

1960s who were consuming their products, they needed to target the working women of the present day by making them feel like they were lacking in terms of appearance and needed to purchase beauty products to improve their looks.

Sandberg notes that stereotypes lead to the hesitancy of women. She mentions how women are stereotyped by gender roles, pushing them to be more passive and less aggressive than men. She emphasizes how we shy away from feminism, for fear of the negative connotations, and need to do more to advance in careers since the wage gap for women to man has not changed since 2002. So many parallels exist between the women

Friedan interviewed in The Feminine Mystique and the women discussed in the works by

Spar, Masters, Wolf, and Siebel Newsom. The frustrations these women share display how the mystique will never fully end, but the imperative part is how women deal with its harsh presence in our society.

The central character of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s 1960 play Happy Days is a housewife entrapped by a mound of earth which inhibits her own original self- development. While one may see Winnie is a post-War housewife in the original 1961 piece, her physical predicament represents the never-ending struggle of any woman dealing with the feminine mystique in any era, making her such an effective character in sharing the female experience. She is confined and isolated in a barren setting, only comforted by her own words and the occasional response from her indifferent husband.

Winnie finds her physically, emotionally, and mentally trapped and unable to break from monotonous routine.

As mentioned in Friedan’s studies, the more the woman denies her individual self, the more she immerses herself in material objects or monotonous tasks to temporarily appease and mask underlying issues. Becket’s stage directions stress Winnie’s repetitive actions, including her constant rummaging through her black bag and putting on her spectacle to examine her toothbrush and reading the label, “- (examines handle, reads) - genuine…pure…what?” (Beckett 10). Right from the beginning of the play, Winnie displays a need to keep occupied, gain verbal assurance from her barely responsive husband, and talk herself through her day, as she constantly recognizes the monotony of her life when she states, “No better, no worse, no change” (Beckett 13). Clearly Winnie recognizes the lack of change from one day to the next but fails to possess the quality needed to escape the ennui. This fixation mirrors the women Friedan discusses in The

Feminine Mystique who purchase various household items and focus on cleaning supplies and appliances to deal with a void. Winnie repeats her prayers and incessantly motivates herself to start her day when a loud bell wakes her under a relentless sun, as she states at the opening of the play, “World without end. Amen. (Eyes open, hands unclasp, return to mound. Pause.). Begin your day, Winnie. (Pause). Begin your day, Winnie” (Beckett

8). Her large bag resembling a woman’s purse provides a sense of comfort, as she fills her days by focusing on its contents. Her black bag is representative of purses and how they represent femininity for women.

As Winnie immerses herself in trivial tasks such as arranging toiletries from her black bag, she resembles a troubled housewife attempting to keep busy and avoid revealing her inner feelings, as S.E. Gontarski states in Happy Days: A Manuscript Study, “Through most of the play we see only the façade of her [Winnie’s] second nature, and the façade

29 makes possible her “happy days” (Gontarski 19). Winnie insists that the day will be happy despite the most opposite of circumstances: she is buried in a mound up to her waist and later up to her neck, and in this setting there is no one else in sight but her husband who barely converses with her. Happy Days is a visual guidebook for The

Feminine Mystique. Winnie’s constant, verbal convincing to herself that it will be another

“heavenly day,” resembles the housewives from Friedan’s interviews who convince themselves that they need nothing more beyond the white picket fence, children, household products, and working husband to ensure happiness. Below the surface, however, they are internally unsatisfied and dysfunctional. After buying into the propaganda that domesticated bliss would be the best future for them, they have failed to look further down the road to when the novelty wears off. With Winnie’s dusty clothing and tattered appearance, she represents the worn novelty of the ideal housewife.

Despite Winnie’s superficial level of optimism, she becomes more and more buried and consumed by the feminine mystique which takes on the form of a mound. This lack of development and restlessness, as discussed by Freidan and staged by Beckett, is relevant and relatable to women in any era. Although we do not know exactly how

Winnie came to this predicament, we can use The Feminine Mystique as a roadmap to better understand her experience as a housewife. The depiction of the feminine mystique in the form of a mound remains important because it magnifies the ongoing issue of the feminine mystique, which morphs and changes itself in order to inhibit women. As

Winnie becomes more engulfed under the feminine mystique, the less and less she remembers from her own individual past. As a housewife, she appears to have become quite disconnected from past and only able remembers fragments, including going to

30 dates to balls and being frightened with her waxen doll as a child. She fails to fully compile the specifics of her past stories together. She struggles to identify names of her past properly as she tries to recollect a ball when she says, “A Mr. Johnson, or Johnston, or perhaps I should say Johnstone” (Beckett16). Beckett described Winnie as, “A child-a woman with a short span of concentration- sure one minute, unsure the next” (Knowlson

16). As Winnie can only recall fragments of events or obstacles which have made her into the person she is presently, she becomes estranged from herself as an individual.

While the early plays of Nobel Prize winning Irish playwright Samuel Beckett ponder the existence of male characters, such as with his most famous work Waiting for Godot, later works of his in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s magnify the female experience with a solo, female presence. Not I (1972), Footfalls (1975), and Rockaby (1980) all isolate various sections of the female form. While Not I isolates the mouth, Footfalls isolates the feet and follows the pacing of a decaying, ghostly female presence. Rockaby closely focuses on the face of an older woman as she rocks herself slowly to death. Each of these plays, including Happy Days, include specific sounds and a rhythm or repetitive motion to spotlight the female experience, as the monologue in Not I includes a reference to a buzzing as Mouth reveals fragments of a traumatic past, Footfalls includes footsteps and pacing, and Rockaby includes a lullaby and rocking chair noise. The patterns in all of these plays are used to underscore the rhythm of each woman’s life, as she is put through the monotonous, never-ending routine. This routine is to fill a void but it is never filled and the day never ends for these women.

S.E. Gontarski notes that Happy Days was initially titled Female Solo in an earlier draft by Samuel Beckett. A quotation by Beckett from James Knowlson’s work Damned

31 to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett describes why Beckett chose to elevate and magnify the female character of Winnie and the female experience in Happy Days, when he states:

Well I thought that the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody, would be

not to be allowed to sleep so that just as you’re dropping off there’d be a ‘Dong’ and

you’d have to keep awake; you’re sinking into the ground alive and it’s full of ants;

and the sun is shining endlessly day and night and there is not a tree … there’s no

shade, nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all you’ve got is a little

parcel of things to see you through life." He was referring to the life of the modern

woman. Then he said: "And I thought who would cope with that and go down

singing, only a woman. (Knowlson 501)

This quote effectively describes the woman and her survival instincts in her battle to deal with the oppression of the feminine mystique. With her femininity as represented with a purse and parasol as illustrated by Beckett, she uses words and song to get herself through the day. Winnie in particular deals with the oppression and monotony by singing, chatting, and depending on her black bag, as the housewives Friedan interviews deal with the feminine mystique by cleaning and consuming. The lack of sleep roots Beckett references is caused by monotonous tasks and the chores of the housewife, as well as caused from anxiety and depression Friedan uncovers in her interviews.

By remaining occupied with a purse of objects and observing herself with her mirror,

Winnie fails to break free from the mound or mystique. Beckett’s stage directions on multiple occasions throughout describe women “rummaging through the bag” and her items in the bag provide her with a strict routine and dependency, as Linda Ben-Zvi

32 describes in Women in Beckett, “In such a world, to live is to get up, brush one’s teeth, comb one’s hair (or hairs); to survive is to “play” the roles assigned or- if in doubt or in rebellion- to improvise, but always to be aware of the script already written, in which gender too often shapes the part” (Ben-Zvi X). This quote underscores how Winnie’s life in this entrapped state is in a sense “already written” and predictable as with the daily life of the housewife Friedan speaks of. Biological role determines much of Winnie’s fate, as with the women Friedan interviews who are pressured to fill stereotypical roles based on biological biases.

Winnie quotes tragedies such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. She appears to identify with tragic heroes. All of Winnie’s items such as her lipstick are almost gone, foreshadowing an end for her. Winnie’s brief moments of unhappiness, often quickly masked or shifted with laughter or subject-changes such as the discovery of the emmet, lead us to question the severity of the dark feelings she is suppressing. Though her end seems nowhere in immediate sight from a repetitive, never-ending hell, she anticipates her eventual end and reveals being gradually burned: “Shall I myself not melt perhaps in the end, or burn, oh I do not mean necessarily burst into flames, no, just little by little be charred to a black cinder…” (Beckett 38). As stated before, the mystique is powerful and has no end, but the interesting area to focus on is how we as women deal with it and allow it to affect us. Winnie deals with it by focusing on objects and incessantly talking.

Beckett’s development of a character such as Winnie not only reinforces how detailed and specific he is, but also makes a statement about the overall experience of women in an oppressive society with use of strong visuals. By entrapping Winnie and displaying her in a mound, he specifically sets the stage for an exploration of her experience as a

33 housewife and woman, staging the stereotypical feminine items and behaviors associated with women, as Ben-Zvi describes these items and gender-specific actions Winnie is

“conditioned” to do when she says, “Winnie goes though the rituals that society ascribes to, and allow, the female. Parasol, hat, and capacious bag are all accoutrements she has inherited” (Ben-Zvi xiii). Winnie’s items and rituals distract her, yet her words are what allow her to go on day-by-day, and is the only thing helping her push on. Winnie’s presence is key in depicting the struggles of women who force themselves to work through the confines of a gender-limited society. Her character serves as not only a representation of woman struggling to push though the mystique, but also an inspiration to overcome, as actress Martha Fehsenfeld says, “As I discovered the Winnie in myself and in other women I have known- my grandmother, mother, aunt among them- I realized that Winnie is in all of us. She is whatever survival is. She is a survivor above all and in spite of all” (Ben-Zvi 57). Winnie’s ongoing presence and voice throughout the play mirrors the struggle and fight women constantly face against oppressive forces.

The organization and layout of Friedan’s novel provides elements, specific examples, and solid proof as to why and how the feminine mystique has caused women to be in a buried state of anxiety, depression, and unhappiness. With her specific layout of chapters addressing women’s struggles within the confines of the mystique, she provides a road map to the understanding of a particular woman’s actions and lifestyles. Beckett presents us with a housewife, elevated and entrapped by a mound above her husband Willie, as he is behind her and able to fully move, unlike her. The play provides an intimate opportunity to watch Winnie, day-in-and-day-out, as she chats and completes redundant tasks under a relentless sunlight. She represents the women who have thus far pursued the

34 housewife role as demanded by the feminine mystique, with her pearl necklet, bust- enhancing dress, and the red lipstick she applies. Confined by the mound which serves as an allegory for the feminine mystique, Winnie has lost full capabilities of her body, such as her legs and later her arms. This suffocating position represents the inhibiting consequences of pursuing a life with the structures of the feminine mystique. Winnie, like many of the women discussed by Friedan, appears to physically meet the housewife criteria in appearance and on a superficial level. Beneath the service however, she appears quite unstable and uncomfortable, as relentlessly seeks validation and comfort by needing to converse with her husband, as she says to Willie, “Whereas, if you were to die

- (smile) – to speak in the old style – (smile off) – or go away and leave me, the what would I do, what could I do all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep?” (Beckett 21). She appears to admit to having no identity without Willie and does not know herself.

Winnie often changes the subject when she appears frazzle or unsettled, as Friedan describes this common tactic among women, “Can the problem that has no name be somehow related to the domestic routine of the housewife? When a woman tries to put the problem into words, she often merely describes the daily life she leads” (Friedan 25).

She motivates herself to wake daily and organizes menial objects, talking constantly to prevent silence. Winnie’s pursuit appears to be buried in a state of insecurity, restlessness, and depression. Winnie’s issues directly parallel the issues of the women

Friedan interviews and discusses in The Feminine Mystique because all of the elements which result in negative after- effects of the mystique are identical to Winnie, including self-medicating, exhaustion, depression, suicidal thoughts, and vicariously living through

35 a significant other or children. Winnie consults both a medicine bottle as well as revolver in the play, comparing to Friedan’s description of women suffering and self-medicating while under the confines of the mystique as well, as she describes, “Eighteen were taking tranquilizers; several had tried suicide; and some had been hospitalized for varying periods, for depression of vaguely diagnosed psychotic states.” (Friedan 235). By using

Friedan’s book as a map to navigate through the psyche of an oppressed female housewife, one gains a better understanding of the character of Winnie. In many ways

Winnie wishes to address the revolver and Willie’s past suicide attempts, as well as incidents from her childhood because these lean toward the issue of her current problem and mental state. As Beckett begins his play with Winnie already in the confined mound,

Friedan’s research and literature provide a prelude and aftermath for Winnie. One may apply Friedan’s concepts to reason why Winnie ended up where she is and what will become of her later, as Winnie mirrors the oppressed women Friedan interviewed and observed for years to develop her theories.

By seeing how physically and mentally straining the mystique is by viewing and listening to Winnie, one is more apt to push for societal changes. While we know little about Winnie’s past aside from fragments of memories. She recalls once having freedom to move about and be in the shade (Beckett 34). Winnie remains extremely limited in what she can do now. Winnie herself reveals the constraints of her biological role when

Willie can not relate to her feeling “sucked up” when she states, “Ah well, natural laws, natural laws, I suppose it’s like everything else, it all depends on the creature you happen to be” (Beckett 34). Winnie anticipates a change will come when she suggests, “And perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all the

36 round me and let me out” (Beckett 33). The problem that has no name engulfs Winnie, and by elevating her above Willie, she represents a woman who is isolated from society.

The viewer can clearly observe her tortured reality and lack of knowledge of the outside world, as Willie reads the newspaper and views job listing but she remains oblivious.

Exhausted and radiated by a harsh and perpetual sunlight, Winnie’s monotonous days never end. Identical to the housewife living within the confinement of the feminine mystique, Winnie’s repetitive days, redundant conversations with herself, and need to seek validation from her husband leave her erratic. S.E. Gontarski states, “Winnie’s adaptation depends on her distorting her circumstances and pattering her existence with every-day ritual, itself an attempt to impose order on chaos, the void, the mess” (17). She remains in a sense of denial in order to “get by” from day to day, despite her unhappy and restrictive surroundings.

At the age of fifty, Winnie is unable to separate herself from this very mound which entraps her because her identity has thus far depended on her role as a wife, as well as connected to menial tasks and a fading idealistic housewife image. Becket’s initial physical description of Winnie in the beginning of the text mirrors the idealized housewife of the 1950s and early 1960s era as discussed by Friedan, as he describes

Winnie as, “About fifty, well-preserved, blond for preference, plump, arms and shoulders bare, low bodice, big bosom, pearl necklet” (Beckett 7). Her busty shape and pearl necklace remain in place as she attempts to remain collected and optimistic about each new day despite the fact that she is slowly dying away, never having developed an independent spirit. Up until this point, like most housewives, Winnie’s identity has remained defined and justified by being a housewife, and resembles a mask, as Friedan

37 stresses the importance of women having careers or self-fulfilling activities outside of the home because women who has their own sense of identity “are thus less at risk than the housewife whose whole identity is tied up with the life at home, which she can never completely control” (Friedan xxii). Winnie can never fully control Willie and his actions.

As Winnie tries to initiate conversation she will never be able to fully control Willie or the fact that he may die at any moment. Her restlessness and anxiety lie in her fear of not having him to speak to in the futures. Up until now, Willie has in many ways served as a diversion for Winnie, taking the focus off of building her own separate identity beyond that of a housewife. Winnie’s fears of being alone and without having her husband’s presence there are revealed when she says, “I can utter a word and I must make sure you heard the one that went before then no doubt another come time when I must learn to talk to myself a thing I could never bear to do such wilderness” (Beckett 27). Winnie fears the moment of hearing her own voice and possibly addressing an inner self after Willie is gone because she has thus far identified herself only in relation to her husband. At age fifty, Winnie fears a solo existence because the feminine mystique bred her to focus on the housewife role, as Friedan states, “All they had to do was devote their lives from early girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children” (Friedan 16). Taking the new venture of self identity causes anxiety for Winnie and she considers it a foreign type of wilderness.

Winnie constantly adds that she “musn’t complain,” again pertaining to issues of housewives interviewed by Friedan. These housewives masked their issues and unhealthiness by internalizing, as they felt guilty or unappreciative for feeling unfulfilled.

As Shari Benstock mentions of Winnie, “That is, she survives as most wives, and

38 housewives, survive- but not questioning the givens of their existence but focusing on daily necessities, coping hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute” (Ben-Zvi 174). Winnie’s unfortunate plight has resulted from her not questioning the given circumstance of her limited and oppressed life sooner. With her red lipstick, bright blonde hair, and pearl necklet, she has become lost in the role of perfect housewife. Housewives such as Winnie experience the “the problem the has no name” due to what Friedan refers to as “the happy housewife heroine,” which took over media images and articles, glorifying the role of the housewife for women and isolating her from the current events of the outside world, leaving her little intellectual freedoms and development. In The Feminine Mystique,

Friedan highlights article topics geared towards women in McCall’s magazine in the early 1960s, which included a girl being taught to bat her eyelashes and lose at tennis to find a husband, glamorous maternity clothes pictures, and wedding stories (Friedan 29-

30).With total engulfment in the housewife role as pressed by the mystique Friedan questions, “But forbidden to join man in the world, can women be people? (Friedan 50).

Winnie is clearly unable to join the world of men, as she is limited in mobility and unaware of outside current events. Willie is mobile and has access to the news of the worlds with his newspaper. The couple which passes by and notices a buried Winnie only worry about her struggle in relation to a man, as a passerby named Shower or Cooker inquires about Winnie and Willie, “He better dig her out, what good is she to him like that?” (Beckett 43). Menial comments such as this serve as a microcosm for the challenges of the female experience is society. Willie does not appear concerned, as he barely responds to Winnie, and the only passerby she sees is more worried about her duties of a wife than her overall well-being. The mound restricts Winnie and her full

39 access to see and move about freely, highlighting Friedan’s theory: “The feminine mystique is so powerful that women grow up no longer knowing that they have the desires and capacities the mystique forbids” (Friedan 68). This quote relates so well to

Winnie because she has become accustomed to her confines. Friedan stresses for women to pursue outside opportunities but the routine of domesticity has become their deadener.

Winnie fears her own voice and thoughts because she has been thus far discouraged from acknowledging them and moreso focused on the housewife role. This struggle also relates issue Friedan raises in regards to “the crisis in woman’s identity,” proposing women need to break from the confines of the glamorized housewife role to actually establish their own unique existence, separate from the role of wife, mother, or, homemaker, as Friedan proposes, “In a sense that goes beyond any one woman’s life, I think this is the crisis of women growing up- a turning point from an immaturity that has been called femininity to full human identity” (Friedan 79). The ultra-feminine role needs to be stripped in order to recognize human identity.

The frilly, feminine material aspects which confine women to a helpless housewife role are addressed by Friedan and visually applicable to Winnie. Winnie’s frilly parasol and music box provide a comfortable, daily routine for her, yet lead her looking and feeling more insecure and helpless. By clinging to certain material possessions Winnie appears child-like and desperate for menial distractions to divert hers from anything serious. The image of Winnie holding up the parasol before it burns out resembles a stationary, porcelain doll, attached to certain gifts or material objects which clearly lead her more entrapped, as she states in regards to the parasol, “Reason says, Put it down,

Winnie, it is not helping you, put the thing down and get on with something else. (Pause).

I cannot. (Pause). I cannot move. (Pause)” (Beckett 36). The dainty parasol represents various material things restricting women and keeping them in a helpless state. Friedan addressed Sigmund Freud’s theories as ammunition for the feminine mystique, as he viewed women as child-like dolls meant to be housewives and homemakers. In this moment with the parasol, Winnie addresses a feeling of restriction and entrapment and that an overall change in the world needs to occur before she and other housewives can be liberated, as she says while still holding the parasol, “No, something must happen, in the world, take place, some change, I cannot, if I am to move again. (Pause)” (Beckett

36). Her only assistance is Willie, again reinforcing the dependence on the husband and reinforced the helplessness of women, as Friedan addresses in regards to Freud’s theory as well as the feminine mystique, as Winnie pleads, “Willie (Mildly). Help. (Pause). No?

(Pause). Bid me put this thing down, Willie, I would obey you instantly, as I have always done, honoured, and obeyed” (Beckett 36). Winnie reveals she has always obeyed her husband, and to escape her current predicament she needs to her husband’s approval. The moment where Winnie suggests a need for an outer change in the world before she can move and change her position with the parasol is a pivotal moment. The image of her holding the parasol without moving, gazing emotionlessly ahead, illustrate that she is stuck in a certain time and place which leaves her emotionally, physically, and mentally immobile. This is representative of the feminine mystique at the high of its debilitating power. Her suggestion that something needs to change justifies Friedan’s view for change in the treatment of women in The Feminine Mystique:

If women were really people-no more, no less- then all things that kept them from

being full people in our society would have to be changed. And women, once they

broke through the feminine mystique and took themselves seriously as people,

would see their place on a false pedestal, even their glorification as sexual objects,

for the putdown it was. (9)

Winnie elevated in the mound and holding this parasol clearly realizes her place on this false pedestal, yet can not move herself. The paralyzing image of unhappiness and immobility in this role sparks her to reveal that a change beyond herself needs to occur before she can move from her current isolated state. In many ways Winnie mirrors the scared child Millie, whom she describes as frightened with her doll as a mouse creeps up her leg. Winnie’s story appears to be reminiscent of her own life, but she uses other names and speaks in third person to avoid personalizing it.

As pinpointed by the Friedan, women within the confines of the feminine mystique learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights- the independence, and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminist fought hard for in the early 1900s. Friedan notes how much media changed from the 1930s and1940s with independent, working women revered in articles and advertisements, but how they appeared highly domesticated due to the efforts of advertisers by World War II and after.

Winnie relates to many of the women discussed and suffering under the rigid and unforgiving fate of the feminine mystique in The Feminine Mystique not only just by her physical appearance. Depression is a common side effect Friedan mentions in her book, which was “patch-holed” by daily chores and medications. As Winnie applies lipstick, carefully places her hat, brushes her hair and teeth, and maintains her nuclear housewife appearance, she avoids reality and “patch-holes” her unsettled state. Winnie’s erratic behavior reveals hints of depression, such as chugging the medicine bottle and kissing the

42 revolver. As she at one point even self-medicates with her medicine bottle, Winnie sporadically whimpers throughout the play, and unveils a love/hate relationship with a revolver, she addressed many of the issues women tackle in regards to Friedan’s concept of “the problem that has no name.” Winnie’s constant need for Willie’s reactions and conversations reinforce that her role as a wife is pivotal for survival, yet also a barrier for individual success and development. She fears living completely on her own.

As Winnie fails to escape the mound and finds herself neck-deep in it by the end of the play, she represents the women discouraged to acknowledge their opportunities and potential as individual human beings due the confines of this mystique. The aging and ignorance of her husband Willie and her isolation in the elevated mound have left her in an erratic, lonesome state. At the age of fifty, this isolated stage is pivotal for Winnie as she struggles to search for her own identity to break free from a life of redundancy as a codependent housewife.

Beckett uses many aesthetic elements and specific theatrical tactics in Happy Days to isolate Winnie, in turn giving her a voice, drawing the audience immediately to her story, as Winnie says, “Ah yes, so little to say, so little to do, and the fear so great, certain days, of finding oneself…left with hours still to run, before the bell for sleep, and nothing more to say, nothing more to do, that days go by, certain days go by, quite by, the bell goes, and little or nothing said, little or nothing done” (Beckett 152). Winnie fills her days with the same routines for comfort but they leave her empty. There is no alternate life or opportunity for her within the mound. When Winnie tries to imagine life beyond the mound she refers to this as wilderness.

The mound mystique constantly morphs and changes with each era in order to inhibit and distract women from the real issues at hand. By viewing various rendition of

Beckett’s mound in the second chapter, we can see how the mound affects different women in the same way. By viewing a strong physical representation of a housewife encased by a mound, a highly-effective visual is presented by which to better understand the severe, restrictive effect the feminine mystique has on a woman and her life.

Beckett’s heroine embodies the very crisis which Friedan discusses: a housewife searching for purpose and her own identity. By viewing vastly different versions of the mound as well in the next Chapter, we can also understand Friedan’s book better, by viewing each mound as a different iteration of her ideas.

Chapter 2: A Closer Look at the Mound in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

By observing a number of renditions of the mound in Happy Days by both male and female directors worldwide, the overall concept of the feminine mystique remains prevalent no matter what medium each director uses. The mounds always accentuate

Winnie and isolate her in a unique way, evoking feelings of frustration resulting from the demands of the feminine mystique. The seven mounds observed in this study illustrate a variation of detrimental effects caused by the feminine mystique, including denial, desertion, unfamiliarity, helplessness, pressure, limitations, and a frustrated yearning for more independence. The traditional mound which Beckett describes is made of dirt and is reminiscent of a tomb, but many directors stray from this exact material with their own versions of the mound. However, despite the different materials used by various directors, the same concept remains clear in each presentation that all of the mounds or mystiques are physically pressuring the character of Winnie to emphasis her anxiety and isolated state. By using different landscapes and mediums for the mound, the magnitudes and degrees of how the mystique confines women appear limitless. By viewing the mound, the harsh reality and effects of the feminine mystiques are not ignorable, as they not only physically bury Winnie, but steadily immobilize her to the point of almost complete paralysis by the second act of the play. This physical immobilization, enhanced most as Winnie is buried up to her neck in the second act, provides the reason why the feminine mystique leads to debilitating depression or possible suicide. This restriction also stresses why a change must be made for women as presented in Friedan’s text and mentioned by Winnie at the moment where she is unable to let go of the parasol. I chose to discuss the mounds and the theories they represent by the order of which these theories

45 are discussed in the chapters of Friedan’s book. All of the mounds are visible in Figures

17 through 30.

Director Jose Carrasquillo’s version of Happy Days, designed by set designer Tony

Cisek, at the WSC Avant Bard Theater in Arlington, Virginia in 2011, is probably the best depiction of the harsh consequences and disappointments of a women pursuing what

Friedan refers to as ultimate feminine fulfillment (Figures 17-18). This mound indefinitely captures the disappointment of Winnie, as she is buried by a fleeting, childlike ideal of a fairytale ending. Exact images of femininity were pushed to women in magazines, as Friedan describes, “The image of women that emerge from this big, pretty magazine is young and frivolous, almost childlike; fluffy and feminine; passive; gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home” (Friedan 30). Friedan highlights this as another detrimental action taken by women under the confines of extreme femininity, as Friedan notes, “Women who suffer this problem, in whom this voice is stirring, have lived their whole lives in pursuit of feminine fulfillment” (Friedan

22). A once new and glamorous princess gown and has now become tattered and old, as the novelty of only being a wife and not developing another identity has worn off for

Winnie. These concepts are discusses in Friedan’s Chapter Two entitled “The Happy

Housewife Heroine.”

Friedan stresses the importance of women needing to have a talent, skill, or careers of their own aside, in place, or in addition to the position of the mother/housewife role. The fatal consequences of seeking validity and purpose only in relation to a fairytale ending or marriage are apparent as Winnie is consumed by the dirtied gown in this version of the mound, as her head sinks in disappointment at the close of the play. This gown represents

46 the negative effect of focusing on sole appearance and charm instead of drilling energies into a career and education for independent survival, as Friedan notes:

Powerful forces in this nation must be served by pretty domestic pictures that stare at

us everywhere, forbidding a woman to use her own abilities in the world. The

preservation of the feminine mystique in a sense could have implications that are not

sexual at all. When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on

women’s passive dependence, their femininity. (196)

Winnie’s dress weighs her down and symbolizes the femininity which forbids her from using her own abilities which Friedan speaks of. This mound parallels Friedan’s mentioning of the character of Nora from Henrik Ibsen’s groundbreaking play A Doll’s

House. The play depicts the strife of a housewife who leaves her husband and children after years of feeling patronized and oppressed. In this mound Winnie is elevated and dressed as if she were a porcelain doll. This depiction symbolizes helplessness and weakness. Winnie is displayed here in a manner which is relevant to many current portrayals of women in media and movies, as a “damsel in distress.” This classic, passive, princess-like image of a woman is a tool the feminine mystique thrives off of.

Set designer Tony Cisek best describes this version of the mound when he reveals his inspiration and description of it:

We were quite proud of that production. It's hard to remember what the exact

discussions were, but the question that obviously presents itself when first

approaching the design of this play is:

What is the mound? And by extension: What is trapping Winnie? From what can't

she escape? We also wanted to make some kind of sense, at least for ourselves, of

why Beckett has Winnie dressed up in a "low bodice" and a "pearl necklace," and has

Willie wearing a worn-out tux. It would be presumptuous to say we figured out the

answer, for I don't think there are any clear answers in this enigma of a play. But

what interested us the most was the notion that this couple got locked into lives from

which they couldn't escape, roles created for them by society, into which they

somewhat willingly stepped. So we interpreted their fancy dress as the clothes they

were wearing when they first met, at some fancy lawn party. And it was at this first

encounter, when they entertained the notion of entering into a relationship, that they

got locked/trapped/tied to each other, their relationship, the idealized notion of what

their lives could be together. For Winnie, all that hope and possibility was manifested

in her beautiful blue party dress, and that was what, in our production, literally

became her prison. (Cisek)

Cisek professes a seasoned understanding of how imperative it is to ask the right questions when assessing and interpreting the mound. He hypothesizes about characters of Winnie and Willie in an empathetic way which suggests how biological and societal fates, as well as personal choices may have played a part in Winnie’s encasement. Cisek also adds, “It was a real dress: 17 A-line gores pieced together from 120 yards of fabric, all draped over a wood and mesh understructure” (Cisek).

Beckett chooses specific, fine-tuned movements and specific details to annunciate

Winnie’s daily life and enhance her daily routine. While women place so much value on being feminine and focus on their looks they inhibit themselves from pursuing careers

48 and becoming aware of themselves as individual beings, Friedan interviewed many women who feared losing their femininity when pursuing careers, and were afraid they would not be considered marriage material (Friedan 49). This mound accentuates these concepts of focusing on looks and how it inhibits women, as discussed by current writers as well such as Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used

Against Women. Sheryl Sandberg also reasons lack of women in leadership positions due to fairytale-like pursuits and dependency when she states in Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead:

I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of

waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty,"

which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will

be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young

women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the

ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again,

we are teaching women to be too dependent on others. (66)

This quote parallels Friedan’s argument that while we glorify femininity we are mistaking it for weakness, immaturity, and dependency.

In 2013, Nicholas Monu’s directed his rendition of Glückliche Tage at Theater

Krefeld in Germany. The mound in this production was designed by set designer Udo

Hesse (Figures 19-20). By isolating Winnie in a desert-like mound, the concept of desertion is underscored. How Winnie became buried in a mound in the desert may be better understood through the lens of Friedan, particularly her Chapter 3 in The Feminine

Mystique entitled “The Crisis in Women’s Identity.” In this chapter, Friedan illustrates the devastating effects of women who identify themselves as only a wife or mother and nothing else. Once the husband or children are gone, however, the woman is left in a deserted or isolated state, as she has lacked identifying her individual self. The mound of sand and the desert environment perfectly capture the draining effects of a woman who gave up her prior talents or hobbies to become a housewife. As she faces death, or the death of her husband, a dry mound of sand suctions her in, and she has grown nothing of her own in this isolated desert. The desolate mound creates a lonely feeling for Winnie.

In many ways she mirrors many of the women Friedan addresses in her book, as they spent so much time and energy desiring to be something only in relation to someone else or something else, such as a wife to their husband, and they abandoned their own identities in this pursuit. Nothing can grow in the sand, as Winnie is unable to develop as a person until she recognizes her own individual identity which is not just in relation to her husband.

Winnie fears the loss of her husband Willie’s presence and ironically he will never be able to climb a mound of sand in order to get close to her. However, this also proposes the issue Friedan discusses that women need to develop their own identities apart from being a housewife. Since Winnie failed to create her own identity beyond the bounds of the domestic setting, perhaps she once had her own identity but abandoned it to become a fulltime housewife. She feels deserted by Willie and this deserted feeling buries her. As mentioned before, Winnie alluded to having more freedoms before when she recalls being able to move about freely and seek shade. The dehydrated and barren desert used to make up this version of the mound also serves as a metaphor for Winnie’s current state,

50 as she is so drained from fully dedicating herself to her husband and home that she has left nothing for herself, and has not grown a separate life, as Friedan notes, “The feminine mystique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their identity. The mystique says they can answer the question “Who am I?” by saying “Tom’s wife, Mary’s mother” (Friedan 64). The isolated atmosphere created by this mound, however, stresses a need for a change and a need for women like Winnie to discover a sense of inner-self, as it outlines the harsh consequences of failing to do so up until this point, as Friedan continues, “But I don’t think the mystique would have such power over American women if they did not fear to face this terrifying blank which makes them unable to see themselves after twenty-one” (Friedan 64). The desert represents this terrifying blank which Friedan discusses, as there is nothing but blank, smooth desert for miles. This unwritten blank or tabula rosa is petrifying for Winnie because she has, up until this point, failed to consider her own future as an individual. As Friedan discusses in her book, many of these women failed to look at their lives beyond the point of getting married and having children

The tendency of many housewives to live vicariously through their husbands or household duties as Winnie does caused them to neglect conditions of their own lives down the road without their husbands. By using Winnie’s positioning in a dry desert, she is made an example of a travesty of the feminine mystique, as a need for women to prepare differently for an individual future is stressed by Friedan with better educations, job training, as well as artistic pursuits. Before pursuing individual endeavors, a woman first has to address her inner self, a task and concept so challenging and foreign for

Winnie. The desert setting and mound of sand which consume Winnie are an example of

51 the lifeless environment resulting from buying and being sucked into the “hype” of the feminine mystique, abandoning education and career goals, and only drilling one’s energies into wifehood or motherhood.

In Mabou Mines’ 1998 version of Happy Days at the Community Center in New York

City directed by Robert Woodruff, the mound consisted of cracked car windshields representing the debris of a destroyed civilization. The mound was designed by Doug

Stein (Figures 21-22). This mound is representative of Friedan’s Chapter Four entitled

“The Passionate Journey.” Iris Smith’s review of the mound in Performance Review explains, “Like Winnie, these vehicles are mobile no more” (Smith 86). With lack of mobility, she is unable to fixate on other things in the world, causing her to live unhealthy and vicariously though her husband and children out of desperation. The wreckage in this mound is also symbolic of the destroyed past of strong suffrage movement of the early

1900s which women fought so hard for. The housewives Friedan discusses in this chapter have seemed to forgotten the rights the women before them fought so strongly and passionately for.

Only remnants and cracked remains fill the mound, barely present, and unable to remind Winnie of the importance of feminism. With jagged and broken remains, we can better understand why Winnie is unable to connect to her past and make stronger choices for her individual future. The feminine mystique has again succeeded in this version of the mound, as it crushes important memories and parts of history Winnie needs to build a stronger future. The mound is distorting key elements in Winnie’s past and actually using them against Winnie by burying her. This mound is representative of Friedan’s discussion of negative connotations associated with the feminist movement before

Winnie’s time. Feminists were considered masculine and heavily criticized. These harsh criticisms of feminists again led women to veer more towards stereotypical, feminine rolls and to not make waves.

Director André Brassard used an earthlike substance reminiscent of Beckett’s dirt mound in his version of the mound for Happy Days or Les Beaux Jours in Quebec in

2008, however the color of the mound is a piercing violet. The black background enhances the blue mound of rubble, leaving Winnie entrapped in a mound which definitely indicates she is in an unfamiliar setting, nowhere near earth (Figures 23-24).

This isolated setting underscores Willie’s newspaper readings of missiles destroying the world and makes for a post-apocalyptic setting. Sylvie St-Jaques describes in her review of this production as, “In the production of Happy Days, Andrée Lachapelle defends a survivor of a nuclear disaster Winnie” (St-Jaques 1). The mound which overtakes her almost appears extraterrestrial to enhance to unfamiliar place she is in, as she addresses her solemn and lonely self in her isolated state. This isolation and loss of recognition represents Friedan’s Chapter Eight entitled “The Mistaken Choice,” which underscores the consequences of women who chose to give up education, career and personal pursuits to go back home. Winnie is forced to be introspective at this moment, as she is faced with surrounding entropy. However, she is clearly incapable of this confrontation, as S. E.

Gontarski states, “She is incapable of simply confronting the nothingness” (Gontarski

19). The icy blue coloring resembles a dismal crypt, and it appears as if Winnie is on her own planet of isolation. The mound of unknown, cryptic- like matter by which this particular mound is made represents the sense of displacement the feminine mystique causes from the outside world.

Brassard’s use of an icy, cold blue mound creates a cold, unfamiliar atmosphere for

Winnie as she addresses an unknown area. This area contains her innermost thoughts and her individual self separate from Willie. This mound represents the absolute unknown, which cripples women from attempting to explore because it is beyond the confines of the domestic or housewife setting. This unknown territory creates a sense of fear which is instilled in women, another tactic of the feminine mystique, pressing on women that they should not stray far from their husband or domestic setting because they are could end up isolated or helpless. By setting Winnie in an unfamiliar and almost horrific-like atmosphere, we can understand her reasoning for making “the mistaken choice” of staying at home which Friedan discusses many women did in Chapter 8 of The Feminine

Mystique. By making the journey to find an identity beyond a housewife or mother dark, challenging and unfamiliar, a justification is made as to why Winnie fails to leave her current state, as Friedan concludes, “It is easier to live through her husband and children than to make a road of her own in the world…And freedom is a frightening thing. It is frightening to grow up finally and be free of passive dependence” (Friedan 195). So long as Winnie remains dependent on Willie, she weakens her own individual abilities to develop as a person and in turn thinks the world faced alone is foreign and to be feared.

Costa Rican Director Andrea Mata created a rendition of the mound in a 2010 performance of Happys Days or Días Felices with the Pluie Group at the Cultural Center of Spain where Winnie becomes more and more buried by a pile of laundry (Figures 25-

26). This physical representation of the mound enhances the chores and household duties

Friedan discusses which many women immerse themselves in as a way to defer the real issues of “the problem that has no name.” This mound helps the viewer of the play also

54 understand that some of Winnie’s isolation is a result of her own doing. By immersing herself in chores and objects, she does not have to fully deal with her inner self and individual identity which is necessary to break free from the limited parameters of the mound or feminine mystique. This mound represents Friedan’s Chapter entitled “The

Sexual Sell” as well as Chapter Ten entitled “Housewifery Expands the Time Available.”

Melvin Molina describes in his review, “Mata, director, said Happy Days seeks to reflect on the lifestyle of people in the twenty-first century and how many are hiding their problems in material objects” (Molina 1). The mound illustrates Friedan’s discussion of the housewives’ need to repeat chores and consume, a goal set by advertisers particularly after World War II. As Friedan worked at magazines, she knew first-hand that their goal was to keep women in domestic settings, when she revealed that one male editor said,

“Our readers are housewives, fulltime. They’re not interested in the broad political issues of the day. They are not interested in national or international affrairs. They are only interested in the family and the home” (Friedan 31). Allesandra Calleja adds in her review, “Happy Days is a play by Samuel Beckett which invites reflection on human existence being consumerist, selfish, and polluted” (Calleja 1). As Mata uses the mound of clothing to enhance fixation with objects such as the lipstick, purse, and hat over real and substantial problems or issues, her mound successfully reinforces a tragic form of the mystique. The preoccupation with clothing and laundry leave Winnie in a limited state, as she is immersed in only her chores, unaware of the outside world and in denial of exploring her true self. Friedan coins the topic “Housewifery Expands the Time

Available” in Chapter 10 of her book in order to highlight how chores may prolong the

55 facing of internal dissatisfaction within the domestic confines for the women but not prevent it.

As Friedan emphasizes in her text, the redundancy of chores creates an escape for women who fear of discussing the real issue that something is missing in their lives. By filling time with housework, they do not have to silently face a dark place of isolation and unhappiness. When the mound of laundry fully covers Winnie, it is clear that issue of the feminine mystique must be addressed. The laundry has covered Winnie to the extent of visual obstruction, unable to see the outside world. The mound of clothing used by Mata creates a more intimate and relatable feel, and shows us that Winnie’s state is less absurd or obscure than one may think. By burying women in a familiar and relatable pile of laundry, the issue appears that women need to address their unhappiness with the mystique before it buries them as well. In a preview video of the play, Mata shows the clothing piling up Winnie, played by actress Karina Mora, and eventually she is entirely buried and unseen. This depiction of Winnie reveals a sense of insignificance and lack of self-worth when one’s entire being is buried in domesticated duties, material items, and chores. Friedan discusses the women who fall victim to trying to force themselves into the unrealistic, idealistic image of the perfect, happy housewives which the media and society press upon them. In describing women trying to fit these far-fetched ideals, she refers to them as “mystical creatures.” (Friedan 224). By interviewing and describing a variety of unfulfilled housewives, she notes that they receptively engulf themselves in menial forms of housework. Not as harshly lit on stage, this mound is more intimate and perhaps most effective in that it speaks to women viewers as the clothing items burying her are the exact types items other women own in present times.

Lastly, Mata’s mound serves as a direct illustration of Friedan’s Chapter 10 in The

Feminine Mystique entitled “Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time Available” because the laundry entrapping Winnie enhances her troubled fate under the confines of the mystique: preoccupied with household chores to deny unfulfilled feelings and focus on clothing as a material value masking and temporary fixing the lack of a sole hobby of career, as Friedan pinpoints in The Feminine Mystique, “The more a woman is deprived of function in society at the level of her own ability, the more her housework, mother- work, wife, work, will expand- and the more she will resist finishing her housework or mother-work, and being without any function at all” (Friedan 230). The concept of the clothing and laundry is an effective physical representation of the feminine mystique as

Friedan also describes:

This very sense of emptiness, this uneasy denial of the world outside of the home,

often drives the housewife to even more effort, more frantic housework to keep

the future out of sight. And the choices the housewife makes to fill that

emptiness- though she seems to make them for logical or and necessary reasons-

trap her further in the trivial domestic routine. (233)

Friedan enhances the concept of lack of usefulness in this chapter. By becoming enveloped by laundry, Winnie hones no other abilities of her own. Her own existence and purpose lies in a domesticated state. The more she preoccupies herself with the mound of clothing, the more becomes buried and entrapped within it. Only once she is entirely buried by the laundry can she realize the need to identify herself as an individual who can no longer hide from her inner self.

Mark Lamos’ Mound 2010 version of the mound at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, designed by John Arnone, is representative of Friedan’s

Chapter Twelve entitled “Progressive Dehumanization: The Comfortable Concentration

Camp.” As Friedan quotes one of the young women she interviewed who describes her full-time housewife mother, “My mother’s like a rock that’s been smoothed by the waves, like a void” (Friedan 66). Dana Ivey, the actress who plays Winnie in Mark

Lamos’ 2010 version of Happy Days at Westport Country Playhouse in Westport,

Connecticut actually has the projection of a rock on her face at the end of the play

(Figures 27-28). By trying to mask her limitations and unhappiness with negative pursuits, she becomes restricted and buried by a wall or blockade, as Friedan expands on this concept:

If women’s needs for identity, for self-esteem, for achievement, and finally for

expression for her unique human individuality are not recognized by herself or others

in our culture, she is forced to seek identity and self-esteem in the only channels open

to her: the pursuit of sexual fulfillment, motherhood, and the possession of material

things. And, chained to those pursuits, she is stunted at a lower level of living,

blocked from the realization of her higher human needs. (304)

While the comfortable home of the suburban housewife is clearly not a direct parallel to a concentration camp, Friedan pinpoints some similarities. By becoming restricted and slowly losing an identity, they become barricaded and stripped of their individualities as a prisoners of war would be. The stone wall in this mound is representative of this barricade. Lamos’ version of the mound uses stones to block growth. As long as Winnie lives within the confines of the feminine mystique she continues to build a barricade or

58 wall from her individual self. This wall also serves as a defense from knowing herself, again providing the insulation from self-realization which S. E. Gontarski discusses in his analysis. Frank Rizzo successfully describes the effectiveness of this version of the mound in his review of the play when he describes:

Artistic director Mark Lamos stages the work with a sensitive eye -- and ear -- to

detail. The production almost has a musical flow of an otherworldly chamber

piece. The visual landscape by set designer John Arnone is bold, clean, beautiful

and mesmerizing. The pyramid of stones creates an isolating effect. Three large

abstract paintings border Winnie's world and create a contemplative and bleak

landscape for the stage. Most effective are the rock formations: sandy colored

boulders, that under Stephen Strawbridge's subtle lighting, take on almost face-

like imagery. In the play's final moments, as Winnie closes her eyes, her head

morphs into another rock atop the infinite pile. Inspired. (Rizzo)

The barrier in this mound becomes so high that it eventually covers Winnie entirely, as depicted at the end of the play with the projection of the stone covering her face. This stone wall mirrors the women who Friedan feels are “walled up” in the suburbs (Friedan

283).

Robert Wilson’s version of the mound for Happy Days at the Spoleto festival in 2008 probably veers the furthest away from Beckett’s original design of the mound. However it succeeds the most in its physical embodiment of Winnie’s struggles being a direct byproduct of the feminine mystique (Figures 29-30). As it evokes feelings of pressures and a need for an explosion or change, this mound represents Friedan’s Chapter Fourteen

59 entitled “A New Life Plan for Women.” Wilson’s mound turns Winnie into the direct result of the pressures caused by a volcano of sharp, probing societal propaganda. The jagged edges of the mound creates a spiky, uncomfortable feeling, with a pale and ghost- like Winnie resulting from an eruption, symbolizing a possible hope for a future change in women who have suffered from the confines of the feminine mystique. The festering of all of the oppression under the confines of the feminine mystique has finally come to head and erupting from this volcanic mound is more masculine version of Winnie. She is representative of the women Friedan interviews in her last chapter who actually pursued individual endeavors aside from the domestic setting and began to feel a strong, fulfilling, independent sense of self.

Wilson’s depiction of the mound successfully uses projections such as a lightning bolt and darker, bold colors like piercing blue which invoke a need for a feminist movement.

Winnie appears more masculine in this version of the mound, dressed in manly clothing, about to erupt herself from the volcano-like mound. Her mannish appearance in this version of the mound represents Friedan’s discussion of women who took on masculine roles in the home, as they micromanaged their children and husbands. Molly Grogan successfully describes this “cutting-edge” version of the mound in her review:

With its legendary dirt heap and bravely stoic Winnie ritualistically organizing the

meagre contents of her purse, roused to life and sleep by an omniscient bell, Beckett's

play presents the existential conundrum of how to live when everything - and most

notably personal freedom - is taken away. From that basic material, more usually

respected to the letter, Wilson imagines a monumental, volcanic crater of asphalt

slabs backlit by a gently modulating wall of color, into which emerald fields and neon

lightning bolts descend at precise moments like ephemeral decoration of Beckett's

otherwise bleak world. Played by the mature Italian actress Adriana Asti, this liltingly

poetic Winnie, dressed like a 1930s film star, seems hardly troubled by her

predicament. (Grogan 1)

The housewives, as pinpointed by Friedan, became very controlling as they felt they lost control of their own lives under the confines of the feminine mystique, as Friedan pinpointed a therapist’s explanation in her book:

The strange thing was, the therapist said, like so many other women of this era of the

“the feminine role,” in her endeavor to be a “real woman,” a good wife and mother,

she was pushing everyone around- dominating the children’s lives, ruling the house

with an iron hand, managing the carpentry, nagging her husband to do odd jobs he

never finished, managing finances, supervising the recreation and the education- and

her husband was just the man who paid the bills. (285)

Wilson’s mound successfully depicts the frustration caused by the feminine mystique and by viewing the frustration we are able to see a strong need to launch a new plan for women, as proposed by Friedan, to help women such as Winnie escape the confines of mound.

Exploring all of the vastly different versions of the mound in Samuel Beckett’s Happy

Days demonstrates the many forms the feminine mystique takes on in its attempts to conquer women like Winnie. By observing and analyzing different interpretations of the mound which all depict Winnie’s entrapment in different ways, I am able to borrow ideas for my own version of the mound which will be illustrated in the next chapter.

Chapter 3: My Rendition of the Mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Inspiration for my version of the mound not only came from observing the various international mounds in the previous chapter, but also from researching issues women were facing in the era of Betty Friedan. By exploring certain articles, advertisements, and images we can pinpoint why both Winnie and the feminine mystique are poignant issues for the women of both Friedan’s era and today. After reviewing Friedan’s book multiple times, I was inspired to observe visuals from the 1950s and 1960s which women were bombarded with. These visuals which filled magazines encouraged women to buy into the post World War II hype of domesticated bliss. Friedan highlighted sexist, popular headlines and topics which were featured in McCall’s magazine during her era. All of these article topics included a similar theme or goal of being the perfect wife or mother.

The articles lacked any true substance and omitted any news or topics regarding higher education, the job market, or current world events. The headlines mainly promoted women to groom themselves for male validation and marriage. Athleticism and independence were discouraged as the main goal was to find a husband (Friedan 29). The topics were clearly constructed by male writers, as Friedan knew this firsthand, working for many magazines that were trying to push women back into the domestic setting after

World War II.

As underscored by Friedan, the downplaying of individual development and the skyrocketing of sexism were so impactful via the conduit of media that I decided to explore additional magazines from the late 1950s and early 1960s to further my research for my mound. By reviewing magazine images from Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Look, as you can see in photographs in Appendix A, these advertisements and images created a

62 standard of the perfect housewife. She met all the requirements of the feminine mystique, as she was frozen in the housewife setting, busy with cooking, cleaning, and bettering her flawless appearance. With much time to fill her days with, she was a prime consumer and an advertiser’s dream. All of these magazines were filled with advertisements for appliances, make-up, cleaning supplies, and even dinner party ideas to please a husband.

In all of the advertisements the woman appeared infatuated and delightfully amused by the latest household product. Winnie depends on these items for comfort and repetitively sorts them to provide structure and purpose to her days. The women discussed by Friedan performed redundant household tasks and immersed themselves into shopping while in search of validation and meaning, as Friedan states:

But a new stove or a softer toilet paper do not make a woman a better wife or

mother, even if she thinks that’s what she needs to be. Dyeing her hair cannot stop

time; buying a Plymouth will not give her a new identity; smoking a Marlboro

will not get her an invitation to bed, even if that’s what she wants. But those

unfulfilled promises can keep her endlessly hungry for things, keep her from ever

knowing what she really needs of wants. (220)

I noted many parallels with the advertisements of the late 1950s and early 1960s during the height of the feminine mystique’s regime and the advertisements of today which now target women to approve their appearance. As Naomi Wolf pinpoints in The Beauty

Myth, the feminine mystique now capitalizes on working women and housewives with advertisements for weight loss, cosmetics, and Botox which I have also included some photographs of in Appendix A. Women now have the stresses of not just being a perfect housewife, but being an accomplished, career-oriented woman who also looks perfect

63 and thin while doing so. Not much has changed from the propaganda of the late 1950s and early 1960s which Winnie would have viewed. The propaganda has just targeted different sensitive areas for women in its conquest.

All photographs of my mound are available to view in Figures 32-36. I chose to use a vintage Barbie doll for my model of Winnie in the mound (Figure 35). For generations

Barbie has taken on many personas and left a lasting impression on women. Most recently Mattel has released a controversial Barbie doll known as “Entrepreneur Barbie” who is holding an electronic tablet, with perfect hair and a perfect pink dress to accentuate her rail-thin figure (Figure 31). Society creates an idealized version of a woman who can have it all while looking perfect, just as the housewife was encouraged to look perfect while endlessly tending to the needs of her family and home. Barbie does everything while looking flawless and she herself is a medium used by the feminine mystique to set a precedent of what a woman should look like. Barbie would have been at the height of her popularity in the era of both The Feminine Mystique and Happy Days.

For my version of the mound, the title of my thesis comes into play: “Underneath Her

Skirt.” To me, what is underneath Winnie’s skirt are the very things that have led her to her entrapped state. As she has no visible bottom half throughout the play, and what is underneath her skirt is the most personal part of who she is, yet exactly what she fails to confront. While I chose to make the mound part dirt to stay true to Beckett’s original mound of earth, the bulk of the mound is covered by Winnie’s flowing skirt of her dress which has a restrictive, cinched waist. The style of this skirt was common for women to wear in this timeframe and also successfully depicts a physical restriction or cinching to emulate the entrapment Winnie feels. The skirt extends over the mound and is a vintage

64 kitchen dress of the early 1960s made of sturdy cotton, a common material amongst housewives at the time.

Barbie represents the extreme and timeless version of “The Sexual Sell" which

Friedan discusses. For years, Barbie has been used in advertisements and propaganda to push on women an unattainable, idealized standard of beauty. Barbie also represented a great of scale of measurement for my model, as I was able to purchase appliances and items for my model of Winnie which were all consistent in relation to the size of the

Barbie. There is Barbie-doll-sized item for just about anything, therefore Winnie’s items were easy to find and display. Barbie items are available for a variety of eras as well, making the items period-appropriate. She is marketed to little girls and women, as she has taken on many different roles and jobs. In this case, her well-preserved expression perfectly resembles that of Winnie, down to her red lipstick and pearl necklet.

In addition to a washer, dryer, laundry basket, cooking supplies, ironing board, cleaning supplies, a vacuum, buckets, a laundry basket and makeup, I also included a scale to represents the pressures faced on women in regards to their physical appearances

(Figure 36). This also helps visually prove Naomi Wolf’s point in The Beauty Myth that the feminine mystique has grown stronger from targeting women to become housewives and mothers to now targeting their bodies. I wanted to mound to include the modern elements Wolf discusses as well and the scale and magazines were important to incorporating modern-day concepts.

Winnie is in all women. She fights the battles and struggles of all women in a patriarchal society. By including a model of her and adding more relatable elements to

65 the mound which are identifiable in today’s popular culture as well, we see the mound of stresses and pressures which may have led her to her fragile and anxious buried state. A key portion of the model for me was her magazines (Figure 36). I made a specific choice to include piles of them. In the case of my model, Barbie is Winnie, the vintage, blonde housewife which the mound aims to preserve. I chose blue and white colors for her plaid dress and skirt to resemble the sky which Winnie desires to float up into to escape her entrapped fate. I chose a frilly, lacey lilac colored parasol visible (Figure 35). The parasol represents the femininity which Winnie is unable to detach from, as even when it bursts to flames, it reappears. I wanted to make the sure the parasol was as bright and feminine as possible. Underneath her skirt is a partial dirt mound to stay partially true to Beckett’s original mound. I felt the recognized of the earthy, dirt mound due to the fact that in

Ireland this represents a tomb. In many ways, Winnie is encased in a tomb and her only fate is death.

The backdrop behind the mound consists of a projection of the lyrics to the 1970s Shel

Silverstein song “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” which is barely visible in comparison to the harshly lit mound. The lyrics are slightly visible in the background (Figures 33-34).

This song not only describes the life of an unhappy and suicidal housewife, but also references a light in her eyes which I feel parallels the harsh sunlight on Winnie.

According to the lyrics, Lucy’s depression has developed from feeling unfulfilled and unable to pursue her dreams and travel, as she is confined to the walls of the domestic setting, just as Winnie is confined to the mound.

Advertisers and stores thrived on the void of the unfulfilled housewife, as Friedan noted:

In 1957, a survey told the department stores that their role in his new world was

not only to “sell” the housewife but to satisfy her need for “education”-to satisfy

the yearning she has, alone in her house, to feel herself a part of the changing

world. The store will see her more, the report said, if it will understand that the

real need she is trying to fill by shopping is not anything she can buy there. (214)

This description helps us gain a better understanding of Winnie’s behavior and explains why I chose to place magazines in my mound. I wanted to highlight the materialism and endless consumption Andrea Mata also illustrated in her version of the mound. The goal of my mound was to take this to a further extreme and show how all of the propaganda and materialistic consumption Winnie has bought into for comfort has not only overtaken her physically, but also consumed her and been a huge disservice to her. All of the household supplies, magazines, and cosmetics and have become a part of her physically and emotionally, and as she sinks further into her skirt and the mound itself with these items she loses complete sight of who she is as an individual as Friedan proclaims:

The public image, in the magazines and television commercials, is designed to

sell washing machines, cake mixes, deodorants, detergents, rejuvenating face

creams, hair tints. But the power of that image, on which companies spend

millions of dollars for television time and ad space, comes from this: American

women no longer know who they are. They are sorely in need of a new image to

help them find their identity. (64-65)

Winnie represents this tragic condition which Friedan describes perfectly. She no longer knows who she is but fears to face it as her items that have buffered her from this

67 realization, including her husband, are slowing running out. Winnie sinking into her skirt in my mound was influence from the rendition of Jose Carrasquillo’s mound with the princess gown skirt utilized as the mound itself. Winnie sinking into this skirt depicts a sense of helplessness and vulnerability.

The multiple magazines I chose to use in my version of the mound serve as a blockade which prevents or prolongs the process of self-realizations. I found the blockade concept extremely interesting in Mark Lamos’ version of the mound because it shows a barrier and defense Winnie has not only developed from the outside world but also from herself.

She has lost touch of herself, and the magazines create a divide similar to the strong wall in Mark Lamos’ version of the mound (Figure 36).

Also mixed among the magazines in my version of the mound are books (Figure 36). I chose certain books to hypothesize that Winnie possibly was pursuing an education at one point and forfeited this to pursue the full-time demands of being a housewife or mother. As she loves to quote from the classics, a book about English literature is included in my mound as well as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Figure 36). I was influenced by the concept of wreckage and remains as illustrated by the broken shards of glass from the Mabou Mine’s version of the mound. To me, the books I included represent Winnie’s past which is now wrecked by the feminine mystique, as she is unable to move forward. Only by displaying this wreckage can we more clearly see the need for change and the extremely negative effects of the feminine mystique, as Friedan notes:

And so the feminine mystique began to spread through the land, grafted onto old

prejudices and comfortable conventions which so easily gave the past a

stranglehold on the future. Behind the new mystique were concepts and theories

deceptive in their sophistication and their assumption of the truth. These theories

were supposedly so complex that they were inaccessible to all but a few initiates,

and therefore irrefutable. It will be necessary to break through this wall of

mystery and look more closely at those complex concepts, these accepted truths,

to understand fully what has happened to American women. (37)

With my version of the mound, I hope to have created a visual guide to better understand where the feminine mystique gets its power from and how Winnie may have veered off course from the journey of knowing herself. My mound represents how lost any woman can become within the whirlwind of the media, exhausting demands of domesticated perfection, and constant need to consume to fill a void. By laying out the mess of the feminine mystique as it weighs Winnie down, I wanted to create the same intense feeling that there is a need for change as conveyed by Robert Wilson’s mound. As his mound portrays the stress and pressure of the housewives and her need for change via a volcano about to erupt, I wanted to evoke the need to face the negative aspects of the feminine mystique or mound head-on. The Anne Frank book used in my model was also used because Friedan compares housewives living under the restrains of the feminine mystique to victims of the Holocaust. While the comparison is somewhat extreme and far-fetched, there are some parallels in that women under the constraints of the feminine mystique cause women to lose a sense of individuality and independence.

I found direct parallels with Shel Silverstein’s song “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” and

Winnie. The song reveals the story of a 37-year old housewife and mother who is in a depressed and suicidal state. She feels confined in the home and entertains thoughts of all

69 of things she has and will never do independently. I felt the lyrics would make an excellent, faint background projection. I chose to have the lyrics in typewriter font to symbolize how Winnie and Lucy both felt their lives were already written in a sense, and this predictability left them depressed. I found inspiration from the projections use in

Robert Wilson’s mound, such as the projection of the lightning bolt. The projection invoked such intense feelings of pressure and helps enhanced the storyline of Winnie better as well.

Additional inspiration for my mound came from the AMC’s television series Mad

Men. Set in the same timeframe as when Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days premiered, Mad

Men successfully showcases the sexism faced by women both in the work setting and the home setting. The men are in charge of everything and are revered for the choices they make at work as well as in their personal lives, but women are judged much more harshly. Women are judged intensely on appearance and expected to serve men in the work setting. The men who work in advertising focus on objectifying women. The clothing and jewelry worn by the character of Betty Draper is similar to that of Winnie.

Betty also struggles with “the problem that has no name,” as she is unfulfilled and unhappy at home but her husband discourages seeing a psychiatrist. Divorced women are judged harshly.

I chose bright pink appliances for my mound to create an intense pop of color and contrast amidst the dirt mound and also to enhance the concept of “femininity.” In

Winnie’s pursuit of this perfect femininity she has become stuck and unfulfilled. This situation is also similar in the movie Mona Lisa Smile, as Kirsten Dunst’s character, named Betty as well, reveals how she is so happy and fulfilled when she has a band new

70 washer and dryer, serving to mask her unhappy new marriage. This situation ties back to the concept that no matter how much the woman consumes, the void is never filled

(Mona Lisa Smile).

While I borrowed certain concepts and construction ideas from the mounds I studied in Chapter 2, my goal was to develop an original version of the mound from Samuel

Beckett’s Happy Days through the lens of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. The selected theories from the chapters of Friedan’s book which I hope to successfully translate with my mound are ‘The Happy Housewife Heroine,” “The Passionate

Journey,” “The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud,” “The Sexual Sell,” “Housewifery

Expands the Time Available,” and “Progressive Dehumanization.” While the mounds reviewed in Chapter Two each successfully demonstrate one or two of these theories, I wanted my mound to combine all of these theories at once, as I think they all contribute to Winnie’s plight. The perfect silhouette of a Barbie doll stresses the flawless housewife image women such as Winnie chase to resemble. The old books in my mound represent a journey toward education and individual goals now abandoned and gone. The doll-like features and dress represent the concepts Friedan mentions of Sigmund Freud who compared women to fragile dolls. The cleaning items, appliances, and toiletries reveal the never-ending pursuit to fill a void via purchases and never-ending housework. The Anne

Frank book notes a parallel to a prisoner who loses independence.

With the incorporation of the Barbie doll and Barbie items, I hope to provide and eye- catching and contemporary twist on the mound to show how the mound can infiltrate and influence any generation just as Barbie has. Education and the media have affected women heavily and I wanted this to come across clearly in my mound. Winnie’s dainty

71 dress and parasol are also very feminine and doll-like, reminiscent of the sexist theories that women should remain passive, vulnerable, and impressionable, as also outlined by

Friedan in her studies of Sigmund Freud. It is only when we as women see how ridiculous and overbearing materialism and advertising has become that we can address the problem and push for change.

Conclusion

Betty Friedan reveals in The Feminine Mystique:

It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to

lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is

frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question

'who am I?’ except the voice inside herself. (338)

This direct question is addressed by the character of Winnie throughout Samuel Beckett’s

Happy Days. Winnie is that voice made of flesh. Beckett’s leading lady embodies the very crisis which Friedan discusses: a housewife searching for purpose and her own identity, day after day. While words are all Winnie has, she struggles to continue and define herself as an individual. She is questioning the significance and point of her life, as she realizes one day she will no longer be able to speak. Her words have been her only comfort, even if no one is listening to them. She is at a standstill. Many women, housewives in particular, were going through the motions by waking up and going to bed at night completely unfulfilled, constantly questioning their existences. These women were trying to uncover who they were beyond the surface of stereotypical societal roles.

The fear of the unknown and the societal repercussions for going against the grain of the feminine mystique lead Winnie physically, emotionally, and mentally stuck in one time and one place.

By creating a visual plan through The Feminine Mystique as inspiration, I hope to have offered a better understanding of “the problem that has no name,” and a better understanding of Winnie. I think this is a topic has been worth pursuing because many of

73 these issues are prevalent today, and both pieces are applicable to the experience of the modern day woman. The contemporary articles and books in this study show what can happen when women attempt to challenge the feminine mystique, justifying both

Winnie’s fear and the fear of many hesitant housewives to break free of certain monotony. In fact, an interesting and recent article in the April 2014 edition of

Cosmopolitan by Jessica Bennett entitled “The Power of Talk,” explores the harsh criticisms and ridicule ambitious and independent women in our society face in current times. This harsh criticism helps us better understand the extreme hesitancy of Winnie and women interviewed by Friedan to leave the domestic setting.

As mentioned by Bennett in her article, double standards exist. Men work and leave the domestic setting whenever they choose and are glorified in positions of power, yet working mothers and wives are often criticized and described as selfish, icy or unapproachable in positions of power. Women are constantly associated with the ideal, domesticated image Winnie physical represents: the feminine homemaker. When they trail off form the stereotypical nurturing, fragile, female gender roles, Bennett highlights the denigration they face. The very ridicule Bennett mentions serves as one of the most modern forms of the feminine mystique, discouraging many women from climbing the ladder which writer Sheryl Sandberg highly encourages. Bennett states:

But how many fewer women will decide they want to be president, mayor, or

editor after seeing how people treat these women? Studies confirm that girls avoid

leadership for fear they’ll be labeled bossy. As the woman climbs the corporate

ladder, the data shows that men and women like her less. (132)

This argument from Bennett helps us gain a better understanding as to why women are holding back from reaching their full potential on both a professional and educational level. Once the root of the problem is uncovered, it can be addressed to find methods free women such as Winnie from the limitations of the mound. The feminine mystique will always be prevalent in one way or another but it is how we can “dig” ourselves out of it or be willing to address, recognize it, and empower ourselves to prepare for it. Friedan notes that women are used to feeling oppressed:

Does it say something about the new housewife readers that, as any editor can

testify, they can identify completely with the victims of blindness, deafness,

physical maiming, cerebral palsy, paralysis, cancer, or approaching death? Such

articles about people who cannot see or speak or move have been an enduring

staple of the women’s in the era of “Occupation: housewife.” They are told with

infinitely realistic detail over and over again, replacing the articles about the

nation, the world, ideas, issues, art, and women. And whether the victim is man,

woman, or child, whether living death in incurable cancer or creeping paralysis,

the housewife reader can identify. (46)

While the females of Friedan’s era could identify with the blind, deaf, and paralyzed,

Sheryl Sandberg notes a parallel today in women who do not feel welcome to take on leadership positions as she reveals, “It was a watershed moment for me. A moment when

I witnessed how an internal barrier can alter women’s behavior. A moment when I realized that in addition to facing institutional obstacles, women face a battle from within” (Sandberg 28). While internal issues hold them back, outside influences such as the media and education definitely play a part.

An important visual and inspiration which helped tie together my reasoning for this project was a scene from the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile starring Julia Roberts, Julia

Stiles, and Kirsten Dunst. Katherine Watson, a feminist professor at Wellesley College, shows slides to her female students of women in advertisements in the early 1950s. She forces them to think about the media images, biological, and cultural pressures which make them feel like they can not pursue certain careers after graduation from one of the top schools in the country, Wellesley College. The girls miss school for wedding functions, take charm school classes, and one of them even earns an opportunity to go to

Yale Law School but rejects it to move away with her soon-to-be husband for his work.

The final slide slow presented by Professor Watson (played by Julia Roberts) to the senior class is to stress to the girls that they should focus on their careers and education.

She shows advertisement after advertisement, each glorifying World War II and post-

World War II housewives with cleaning supplies. The final slide showcases an advertisement for a girdle which promises to “Set you free,” and Katherine proclaims, “A girdle to set you free? What does that even mean?” (Mona Lisa Smile). This mirrors a quote by Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth when she discusses women’s feelings toward girdles in the generation of Betty Friedan, “For many women in Friedan’s audience, the girdle is made of their own flesh. They can’t take it off at night” (Wolf 214). The girdle represents the harsh restrictions of the feminine mystique. Winnie’s girdle is the mound.

While Winnie is a post-War housewife in the original 1961 piece, her physical predicament represents the never-ending struggle of any woman dealing with the feminine mystique in any era, making her such an effective character in sharing the female experience. She is confined and isolated in a barren setting, only comforted by her

76 own words and the occasional response from her indifferent husband. By viewing a strong physical representation of a housewife encased by a mound, a highly-effective visual is presented by which to better understand the severe, restrictive effect the feminine mystique has and will continue to have on a woman and her life.

By viewing Winnie’s character though the lens of Betty Friedan’s book, we see a middle-aged woman who suffers from a lack of identity. While Friedan’s book includes interviews and stories of many younger women who married young and began to feel unfulfilled after abandoning careers and educations to pursue homemaking full-time with the idea of “Occupation: Housewife,” she also poses questions about how these women will feel twenty years down the road. While magazines and media images Friedan describes throughout her book have pressed the unrealistic and glorified image of a perfect housewife which all women should aspire to be, Winnie represents the sad consequences: lack of identity, self-medication, exhaustion, and depression. Beckett’s creation of Winnie’s mound serves as an allegory for the feminine mystique and how it inhibits women’s independence and self- awareness, as Linda Ben-Zvi notes Beckett’s focus on women, “the later female-focused plays can be interpreted as depictions of female responses to the same suffering in the confines of stereotypic gender roles” (Ben-

Zvi x). By using Friedan’s text and interviews with various housewives in similar, lackluster mental and emotional states, we can better understand how Winnie ended up in this mound, as Friedan states in The Feminine Mystique:

This is the real mystery: why did so many American women, with the ability and

education to discover and create, go back home again, to look for “something

more” in housework and rearing children? For, paradoxically, in the same fifteen

years in which the spirited New Woman was replaced by the Happy Housewife,

the boundaries of the human world have widened, the pace of world change has

quickened, and the very nature of human reality has become increasingly free

from biological and material necessity. Does the mystique keep American women

from growing with the world? Does it force her to deny reality to believe she is

queen? Does it doom women to be displaced persons, if not virtual

schizophrenics, in our complex, changing world? (60).

Friedan’s points remain prevalent because the regression occurred from women of the early 1930s and 1940s who were well-versed in current events and had independent careers to a nuclear housewife role post World War II. The desire to abandon educational outlets and independence and to envelope the perfect housewife role plastering the pages of advertisements of magazines contributed to this cause. Winnie clearly searches for an existence after having sacrificed an entire identity of her own. She alludes to this by saying she was once fully mobile. Now she passes time with her handbag and its contents, as well as constantly attempting and conversation to gain a superficial level of reassurance from Willie.

Friedan states:

The feminine mystique is so powerful that women grow up no longer knowing

that they have desires and capacities that the mystique forbids. But such a

mystique does not fasten itself on a whole notion in a few short years, reversing

the trends of a century, without cause. What gives the mystique its power? Why

did women go home again? (61).

While postwar World War II and the idealized housewife in the media rings true to

Winnie’s current situation and the era in which Happy Days was written, the question

Friedan poses as well as the exhausted fate of women and why she ended up in this entrapped housewife state apply to contemporary times as well. Friedan’s questioning of why able-bodied and well-educated women chose to return home full-time coinciding as well as the staging of a middle-aged, tired, unsettle housewives in a mound presents a powerful argument for modern times as well. Women began to regret sacrifices made under the regime of the feminine mystique, as one older housewife Friedan shares

Dorothy Thompson’s views, “All your life you have been giving away your energies, your skills, your talents, your services, for love” (Friedan 36). By learning about women such as Dorothy, who feel similar emotional distress to Winnie, we gain a better understanding of how Winnie came to her current state. As they age and the family state changes, in this case as Willie ages, Winnie feels empty-handed and without a strong, singular identity. Friedan quotes Dorothy Thompson again in The Feminine Mystique,

“But all this vicarious living- through others, ‘’ the housewife sighs, “As vicarious as

Napoleon Bonaparte” (Friedan 36). The concept of vicarious living leads women to her state of uneasiness as she needs Willie’s responses, even if they are only one or two words. The silence of her own mind and life are driving her slowly to death.

Friedan’s concept of paralysis applies to Winnie. Winnie is first buried up to her waste, but by the second act of the play she is buried up to her neck in mound. Not only is she physically paralyzed but also emotionally and mentally paralyzed. Her discussion of frivolous daily activities or menial tasks continues throughout the play, but she holds back in expressing her true unhappiness to Willie. Her tired face and passionate

79 relationship toward the revolver which she refers to as “Brownie” she pulls from her black handbag uncover her true depression to the audience. Friedan poses the issue of covering the real problems verbally with trivial conversation or in Winnie’s case a large amount of trivial verbal monologue, as Friedan states:

Can the problem that has no name be somehow related to the domestic routine of

the housewife? When a woman tries to put the problem into words, she often

merely describes the daily life she leads. What is there in this recital of

comfortable domestic detail that could possibly cause such a feeling of

desperation? (25)

This relates to Winnie and her mention of how she lays out of her items from her bag daily and then puts them back at the end of the day, like clockwork.

The concepts of housewife malaise and a constant boredom which led to various prescription medicines are also highlighted by Winnie as she chugs her medicine bottle, in a sense self-medicating and then trying to sleep away her problems before the bell again rings. While she recites random and trivial facts which Willie barely acknowledges or reacts to, she insists she needs these fragments of information to occupy her aging and growing pains on a daily basis, as she states, “That is what I find so wonderful, that not a day goes by (smile)- to speak in the old style - (smiles off) - hardly a day, without some addition to one’s knowledge however trifling, the addition I mean, provided one takes the pains” (Beckett 18). While learning a new fact occupies a sector of Winnies mind, another sector of her mind appears to anticipate death in a disturbing, self-comforting manner, as she states, “And if for some strange reason no further pains are possible, why

80 then just close the eyes - (she does so) - and wait for the days to come- (opens eyes)- the happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundreds of hours” (Beckett 18). This statement of Winnie appears as if she is thinking or speaking aloud, revealing a positive outlook on her eventual death. She finds a sense of relief in an anticipation of her demise, as she states, “That is what I find so comforting when I lose my heart and envy the brute beast” (Beckett 18). As her willpower to carry on and live in the mound decline, her only thing too look forward to is death.

Willie’s insensitivity to Winnie’s revelations and literary quotes, including his short answers, mumbling, sleeping, or blowing his now, contribute to Winnie’s desperate initiation at conversation. She needs constant verbal reassurance, as she justifies her needs to constantly provoke Willie:

Ah yes, if I would only bear it alone, I mean prattle away with not a soul to hear.

(Pause). Not that I flatter myself you hear much, No Willie, God forbid. (Pause).

Days perhaps when you hear nothing. (Pause) But days too when you answer.

(Pause). So that I may say at all times, even when you do not answer and perhaps

hear nothing, Something of this is being heard, I am not merely talking to myself,

that is in the wilderness, a thing I could never bear to do- for any length of time.

(Pause). That is what enables me to go on, go on talking that is. (Beckett 21)

As the most personal and intimate revelations in the play, this statement mirrors The

Feminine Mystique in that Winnie admits she is unable to stand alone and fears a sole identity. Winnie distracts herself with housewife-esque task such a rearranging the items

81 from her bag and brushing her hair in order to divert from the fear she has of Willie’s eventual death, “Whereas if you were to die- (smile)- to speak in the old style- (smile off)- or go away and leave me, then what would I do, what could I do, all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep? (Pause) Simply gaze before me with compressed lips”. (Long pause while she does so. No more plucking). Not another word as long as I drew my breath, nothing to break the silence of this place” (Beckett 21-

22). Winnie admits to no sole and separate identity without Willie. She reminisces about happier times with Willie when they first met in their youth, but admits to a unsatisfied existence, alluding to “the problem that has no name,” because clearly her marriage and role as a housewife has not been enough, as she adds in description of Willie’s past words to her, “Words fail, there are times when even they fail” (Beckett 24). Her desperation to have Willie even “in earshot” is crucial to her (Beckett 27). Winnie makes her need for conversation and need for Willie to see her seem like it were a nuisance to him, as she adds, “Oh I can imagine what is passing though your mind, it is not enough to listen to a woman, now I must look at her as well” (Beckett 29). Winnie needs reassurance that she was once loveable and she now does not even seem to love herself. Later on she hides her need for this immediate answer and justifies Willie not answering. This can serve as a motif for the enabling housewife who puts her husband’s needs before her own and fails to confront his ignorance of her inner feelings and loneliness in an unhappy marriage, as

Winnie instructs him, “And you have done more than your bit already, for the time being, just lie back now and relax, I shall not trouble you again unlesss I am compelled to”

(Beckett 31). The way she refers to his “bit” creates an atmosphere of set roles and requirements of husband and wife, along with predictability.

The very mound which women remains enveloped by, day in and day out, is the barricade which prevents her from uncovering her own identity, as Friedan describes in the Feminine Mystique:

It is easy to see the concrete details that trap the suburban housewife, the

continual demands on her time. But the chains that bind her in her trap are the

chains in her own mind and spirit. They are chains made up of mistaken ideas and

choices. They are not easily seen and not easily shaken off. How can any woman

see the whole truth within the bounds of her own life? How can she believe that

voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she

has been living? And yet the women I have talked to, who are finally listening to

that inner voice, see, in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that

has defied the experts. (26)

The mound literally paralyzes then woman yet she fails to move from it. The mound is the feminine mystique which has grown to encapsulate Winnie. and explores Friedan’s discussion her repetitive and relentless actions, highlighted in Beckett’s specific stage directions, serve to ease her as she searches for a true identity and purpose beyond the restrictive stereotype of a housewife. Her discussion with herself and convincing herself to begin her day introduces the idea that she needs a certain routine and conversation with herself to get through her unsettling, lonely life as a housewife, as S.E. Gontarski states,

“Language itself can be little more than habitual repetition of learned sound. Winnie’s prattling helps guarantee her insensitivity; language can be insulation from self- realization” (Gontarski 18). The presence of Winnie from the first moment of the play, as the bell sounds to begging another day, physically displays the uncomfortable position of

83 the unfulfilled housewife, trying to conform and fit into an unrealistic mold. While reading the text of The Feminine Mystique, Winnies struggle to continue living as a housewife buried and consumed by this mound illustrates the inhibiting, unbearable presence of the feminine mystique. In reality, Winnie waits for death and the mound envelops her, leaving her isolated, unfulfilled, and lonely, as Friedan introduces in the beginning of her book, “I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way

American women are trying to live their lives today” (Friedan 7). The lack of true identity and fulfillment Winnie exhibits serves as one of many examples Friedan began to investigate the “mound” or “feminine mystique,” as she states, “And so I began to hunt down the origins of the feminine mystique and its effect on women who lived by it, or grew up under it” (Friedan 7). The pressures and the unrealistic demands of an ideal housewife are rooted from and embedded in this mound, and Winnie’s tattered and exhausted presence reveals the long-term effects, as Friedan justifies her research by adding:

But the puzzle did not begin to fit together until I interviewed at some depth, from

two hours to two days each, eighty women at certain crucial points in their life

cycle- high school and college girls facing or evading the question of who they

were; young housewives and mothers for whom, if the mystique were right, there

should be no such question and who thus had no name for the problem troubling

them; and women who faced a jumping off point at forty. These women, some

tortured, some serene, gave me the final clues, and the most damning indictment

of the feminine mystique. (8)

Winnie’s desperation and passionate relationship with the gun in her purse demonstrate the middle-age, jumping off point Friedan discusses as a result of the demands of the feminine mystique. Depression and loneliness consume Winnie as Willie barely responds to her and she waits nervously for his responses to trivial questions, such as constantly asking Willie if he can hear her.

S.E. Gontarski compares Willie to comfort and furniture for Winnie (Gontarski18).

Instead of searching for a validation within herself, Winnie has thus far sought the validation of her husband. Friedan’s book addressed controversial issues regarding women’s health and the need to uncover why women felt intellectually and emotionally unfulfilled despite society’s efforts to convince them the housewives occupation ascended any other profession. Winnie, as presented in Beckett’s play, coincides with the erratic and unhappy women Friedan interviews and attempts to justify in her book, as

Friedan describes the pressures leading up to housewife breakdowns:

Over and over women heard voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication

that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity.

Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to cope with sibling

rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook

gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress,

look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their

husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They

were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be

poets or physicists or presidents.” (Friedan 11)

Friedan’s quotes lists possible stresses leading up to Winnie’s current state. The mound ideals by which she remains encapsulated includes societal pressures and requirements the housewife faces and must meet.

Winnie is so powerful and relatable, serving a physical embodiment of Friedan’s concept of the feminine mystique, as Linda Ben-Zvi mentions in Women in Beckett,

‘’Beckett’s portraits of women, however, offer mere than the human form or a part thereof; they offer a visual concomitant to what it is to be female” (Ben-Zvi xii). By entrapping Winnie in a mound a limiting her to verbal expressions of self comfort and desperate depending on menial routines, an actual feeling is evoked in what it is to be oppressed as female in society. As Winnie patch-holes her inner troubles, she mirrors the very solution many women use in society when not wanting to emote an unattractive or uninvited, rebellious feeling.

Winnie is many ways is doomed because she has adjusted to her situation and in a sense accepted it, talking constantly to calm herself, as S.E. Gontarski notes, “Language generally in Beckett’s world is not a means of conveying meaning, but a balm for the sores of existence” (Gontarski 18). All Winnie has are her words to get her through. Her words appear on the surface to be superfluous but that and the magnification of her physical entrapment underscore a deeper problem, and a plea for the societal change

Friedan discusses. Although Winnie appears to be a housewife of the 1950s or 1960s in

Beckett’s original production, her presence and her plight are timeless. While the issues of fitting the ideal housewife mold are faced by the Winnie, the issues of career and housewife as well as unrealistic standards of beauty are faced by women in present-day.

Friedan notes of the housewife living amidst the feminine mystique, “She was so

86 ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it” (Friedan 14). Sharing the issue empowers women. While woman have gained so much independence over the years, recent feminist literature shows we still have so far to go, especially as women are still under-represented in the media and in positions of power.

By seeing Winnie, women see how imperative it is to take life into their own hands and not fall victim to the confines of the feminine mystique. By interpreting various versions of the mound which show the mound as an extension of Winnie, we question if you entrapment is partially a result of a choice she made. Set Designer Tony Cisek brings about the interesting question when describing the mound of dress used in his production.

While he felt part of Winnie’s entrapment and fate was biological or societal, part of it may have been a choice or ideal she stepped into herself. He expressed that this choice overtook her in a sense, and Beckett stages this, as current self-help writer Bob Moawad says, “The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins” (Jenkins 44). Seeing an example of this problem by means of Winnie provides a level of comfort for women and opens up the lines of communication for debates to better conditions for women.

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Appendix A. Advertisements

Fig 1. In Sink Erator Advertisement (December 15, 1959 Vogue 70).

Fig. 2 Frigidaire Built-In Advertisement (“Vintage Ad Browser” 57).

Fig. 3 Frigidaire Built-In Advertisement (“Vintage Ad Browser” 9).

Fig. 4 Frigidaire Built-In Advertisement (“Vintage Ad Browser” 16).

Fig. 5 Tide Soap Detergent Advertisement (“Vintage Ad Browser” 62).

Fig. 6 Lewyt Power Cleaner Vacuum Cleaner Advertisement

(“Vintage Ad Browser” 62).

100

Fig. 7 MaxFactor Pancake Make-Up Ad (October 1, 1959 Vogue 41).

101

Fig. 8 Sanitone Dry Cleaning Ad (October 15, 1959 Vogue 46).

102

Fig. 9 Cocktail Party Hosting Idea Advertisement

(November 1958 Harper’s Bazaar 44).

103

Fig. 10 Cocktail Party Hosting Idea Advertisement

(November 1958 Harper’s Bazaar 46).

104

Fig. 11 Bernhard Altman Clothing Advertisement

(December 1960 Vogue 20).

105

Fig. 12 Regina Electrik Broom Vacuum Advertisement (March 3, 1959 Look 7).

106

Fig. 13 Advertisement from Giorgio Armani 2011 Cosmetic Campaign

(http://www.giorgioarmanibeauty-usa.com/).

107

Fig. 14 Botox Advertisement

(http://www.thedermatologyclinic.net/procedure/botox-cosmetic/).

108

Fig. 15 Ronay purse advertisement (November 1, 1959 Vogue 53).

109

Fig. 16 Bufferin advertisement (March 17, 1959 Look 1)

110

Appendix B. Various Renditions of the Mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Fig. 17 Jose Carrasquillo’s Version of the Mound at the WSC Avant

Bard Theater in Arlington, Virginia. The mound was designed by Tony

Cisek. Photo by Dru Sefton (Ruland 1).

Fig. 18 Jose Carrasquillo’s Version of the Mound at the WSC Avant Bard Theater in

Arlington, Virginia. The mound was designed by Tony Cisek. Photo by Dru Sefton

(Klimek 1).

111

Fig. 19 Director Nicholas Monu’s 2013 rendition of the mound in Glückliche Tage at

Theater Krefeld in Germany. The mound was designed by Udo Hesse (Theater Krefeld).

Fig. 20 Director Nicholas Monu’s 2013 rendition of the mound in Glückliche Tage at

Theater Krefeld in Germany. The mound was designed by Udo Hesse (Theater Krefeld).

112

Fig 21 Photo of Mabou Mines’ version of the mound from Beckett’s Happy Days at the

Community Center in New York City directed by Robert Woodruff. The mound was designed by Doug Stein (Photo courtesy of Mabou Mines’ General Manager Joe

Stackell).

Fig. 22 Photo of Mabou Mines’ 1998 version of mound from Beckett’s Happy Days at

TORONADA directed by Robert Woodruff. The mound was designed by Doug Stein.

Photo by Donna Anne McAdams (Smith 1).

113

Fig. 23 Director André Brassard’s violet, post-apocalyptic version of the mound

Happy Days or Les Beaux Jours in Quebec. Photo by Marlene Payette Gélineau

(Fautux 1).

Fig. 24 Director André Brassard’s violet, post-apocolyptic version of the mound Happy

Days or Les Beaux Jours in Quebec. Photo by Marlene Payette Gélineau (Théâtre

ESPACE GO).

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Fig. 25 Photo of director Andrea Mata’s version of Samuel Beckett’s mound in

Días Felices with the Pluie Group at the Cultural Center of Spain

(http://vimeo.com/14845059).

Fig. 26 Photo of director Andrea Mata’s version of Samuel Beckett’s mound in Días

Felices with the Pluie Group at the Cultural Center of Spain

(http://vimeo.com/14845059).

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Fig. 27 Mark Lamos’ version of Happy Days at Westport Country Playhouse in

Westport, Connecticut. The mound was designed by John Arnone. Photo by T. Charles

Erikson (Rizzo 1).

Fig. 28 Mark Lamos’ version of Happy Days at Westport Country Playhouse in

Westport, Connecticut. The mound was designed by John Arnone.

Photo by T. Charles Erikson (Gates 1).

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Fig. 29 Robert Wilson’s version of the mound for Beckett’s Happy

Days at the Spoleto Festival in Italy (“Robert Wilson Archive”).

Fig. 30 Robert Wilson’s version of the mound for Beckett’s Happy Days

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Appendix C. Inspiration for My Version of the Mound and Images of My Version of

the Mound in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

Fig. 31 Image of 2014 Entrepreneur Barbie Doll as recently launched by Mattel

(Mattel).

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Fig. 32 Sketch of my version of the mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

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Fig. 33 Photograph of my version of the mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

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Fig. 34 Photograph of my version of the mound from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

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Fig. 35 of vintage, 1960s, Mattel Barbie doll version of Winnie, with a frilly, lace, purple parasol imported from Hong Kong. Doll is holding Barbie compact, make-up mirror and black, Barbie purse. She is wearing lightweight, flowing, 1960s cotton, kitchen summer dressed, cinched at waist.

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Fig. 36 A closer photograph of various items used within my version of the mound, including miniature versions of magazines (including Look, Good Housekeeping, and

Life) a pink bucket, mini-cleaning soap and sponge, toiletries, books (including Anne

Frank and Pride and Prejudice), a Mattel Barbie make-up case, scale, two make-up

123 compacts, rolling pins, red bottle similar to Winnie’s medicine bottle, kitchen spoon, bowl, and cookbook.

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